Dramatic improvements in profit can be made when a company works to improve accounts receivable efficiency. By cutting down on the time between invoice creation and receipt of payment, you are solidifying your company’s short-term survival and long-term success. By becoming more efficient, you will also become more effective with a noticeable increase in the pace of cash flow, reduction in transaction costs, reduction in operating costs and even an increase in sales and revenue. The problem is that most companies do not set themselves up for success because their invoice management and collection procedures look something like this:

  • Printing an aging report from their accounting or ERP system.
  • Manually searching for clients who require 30, 60, 90-day notices.
  • Digging through old spreadsheets and emails for any notes on the accounts in question.
  • Manually creating, printing and assembling invoices and letters.
  • Manually schedule follow-up phone calls and emails.
  • Updating or closing the outstanding invoice when payment is received.

That takes a significant amount of time and effort, not to mention the high level of data entry errors associate with such manual process. Furthermore, those are only a small handful of the many activities a collector must work through in the day. Collectors also need to deal with calling customers, returning phone calls, settling disputes, and much more. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to improve accounts receivable efficiency and recognize the benefits above by making a few small changes to your processes and the tools you use to manage it.

Accounts receivable management software, just like your ERP or CRM systems, were designed to give collectors all of the tools, power, and automation they need to do their job quickly and effectively so the company can cut costs, and increase profits. With an accounts receivable management system in place, your invoice management process would look more like this:

  • Run a report on past due customers (with the ability to specific if you are looking for customer past 30, 60, 90, etc. days past due).
  • See all customer and account information in one screen including invoice information, payment history, broken promises, past communications, contact information, etc.
  • No more digging through old emails since they will have been automatically pulled in from emails with the customer and attached to their account.
  • Automatically generate and send template-based collection letters with the invoice in question attached.
  • The system will automatically schedule follow-up communications for the collector.
  • As payment is made, the system is automatically updated to ensure accurate records at all times.

With many of the daily clerical and follow up activities taken care of, your team of collectors can re-allocate their time to calling customers to talk personally about outstanding invoices, resolving disputes, etc.