Collecting Customer Payments in a Bad Economy

Until I saw ans article on Business Week about this, I hadn't really considered this side of small business in a terrible economy. Collections.

While people are scrounging just to get enough money to pay for family needs like food, shelter, crib bedding, and gasoline, small business owners who are short on resources may have a lot more issues collecting payments from customers.

Business Week asks: How do you get customers to pay on time? What do you do if they don't? And how do you determine if you'll spend more time and money tracking down a debtor than the payment is actually worth?