Are you chasing money? If so, you’ll probably know the hard way that credit management is about chasing money owed TO a business (Accounts Receivable) and managing the money owed BY a business (Accounts Payable).

Credit can be a very scary thing when money and cashflow is tight! Machines and software are replacing humans for many data entry type tasks, but nowadays this is also the case for chasing money owed (Accounts Receivable).

Accounts Receivable Jobs Require Patience 🙂

Accounts Receivable tasks are a balance between getting paid and maintaining a courteous and professional relationship with your customers. This can be really challenging when you constantly hear the words “the cheque is in the mail” or whatever the current equivalent is. 

There are a few things you can do to “systemise the debt collection process” and we’ve covered them in previous blog posts.

Take the Emotion Out and Systemise Your Accounts Receivable

The most important thing is to have a strategy of regular and frequent contact. This lets your customers know that you are keen to get paid quickly and professionally. Here are some simple things that are great to systemise:

1. Discuss and reinforce your terms
2. Make sure you’ve got the right contact information
3. Include payment details & options for payment
4. Use email to communicate promptly
5. Offer incentives for quick or early payment
6. Clean, clear and concise communications — keep it to the point and be assertive (not aggressive).

These are explained in more detail in this Accounts Receivable blog post.

Email May No Longer be Enough: You Can Now Use SMS and More

Just like bank feeds, automated receipt scanning and other accounting functions which are becoming automated the process of chasing money is also available as a service.

A company that I’ve written about in the past, ezyCollect is one such provider. 

When I think about the service that this company provides it reminds me about how a lot of the digital marketing tasks are automated. You set up a process of events including email AND SMS as well as phone calls so that paying their invoice remains front of mind for your customers. 

Read about the ezyCollect business service here. We’ll have some more information from this company soon!

Accounts Receivable Training Courses

At EzyLearn, we’ve always tried to pack in as much content into our courses as possible.

When we promote our COMPLETE training course packages (packages which include Set Up to Advanced Payroll Administration and Cashflow Reporting) we include THE LOT.

However, recently we’ve also made our courses available separately. 

Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable Courses in Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks are now available separately.