
Sending an invoice out of new accounting software is a significant milestone of a successful go-live. The time spent during implementation crafting an invoice tem...
Sending an invoice out of new accounting software is a significant milestone of a successful go-live. The time spent during implementation crafting an invoice template and learning how to batch email invoices to customers has certainly paid dividends in time saved on processes. So now that you’ve gained this efficiency, you wonder if perhaps you could dedicate time to reimagining the collections process. After all, it is crucial that your customers make payments on time. The importance of a steady income stream is never more visible than when satisfying your business’s obligations. Without a steady stream of income, the effects could trickle down according to Fundbox in the following ways:
- 23% of businesses are not able to hire new employees
- 23% cannot invest in new equipment
- 20% can’t spend on marketing
- 18% hold back on pay increases or bonuses for employees
While cash flow is important, the collections process is a delicate balance between collecting on delinquent accounts and not irritating customers.
Let’s take a look at how we might be able to leverage the new (and free) Sage Intacct dunning notice functionality by delicately incorporating it into the collections process.
Analyze your current process
Ask the following three questions to understand your starting point:
- What is our collection process like today?
- Who is involved in the process today?
- What is working about the current process and what is not?
Whether a process exists today or not, it’s impossible to inject change without the people involved being active participants.
If no process exists, you’ll need to identify who should be involved in the new process, and perhaps task them with brainstorming what the new process should look like.
If a process does exist, interviewing the current folks involved and understanding what it looks like today (what they like, what they don’t like, and what takes too much time) is important. You need to factor in the present condition to understand any non-negotiable requirements.
Now that you have a handle on the current process, we can move to the next step.
Injecting change (safely)
If you have been through an implementation recently, you’re already familiar with the idea of a test instance of Intacct (an exact replica of your production environment). After go-live, instead of adding functionality directly to your production instance, and hoping for the best, you can subscribe to a sandbox instance of Intacct. This will allow you to test and train on functionality prior to releasing it in production.
From Current State to Future State
Imagine your current collections process:
- 1st touchpoint – when the invoice initially becomes past due, the customer is contacted via email to inquire about the past due invoice.
- 2nd touchpoint – the customer receives a phone call inquiring about the past due amount and a follow-up email.
- 3rd touchpoint – another phone call is made letting the client know their services will be inactivated should payment not be received, along with a follow-up email.
- 4th touchpoint – escalating the outstanding invoices to a collections agency
Now imagine how Sage Intacct can make this process more efficient:
- 1st touchpoint – an automated dunning notice is sent out of Intacct to all customers with invoices that have initially become past due. This would replace the time it takes for an individual email to be sent to each customer for each past-due invoice.
- 2nd touchpoint – the customer can still receive a phone call, but now the level 2 follow-up email is also sent to all customers who fall into the “already had an initial email” aging bucket out of Intacct.
- 3rd touchpoint – the collections representative continues to make phone calls to these customers as well, but the level 3 email can be sent directly out of Intacct in bulk.
Sending dunning notices directly out of Intacct not only saves time, ensuring past due invoices can be collected in a timely manner but also adds visibility thanks to the process being generated within a system instead of an outlook mailbox.
Enabling Dunning Notices in your Sandbox
Step 1: Enable Dunning Notices in AR Configuration
Note: Must be a full admin to make module configuration changes
Go To: Accounts Receivable (Setup Tab) > Configuration
Step 2: Enable Permissions
Go To: Company > Roles (or Users) > Subscriptions > Accounts Receivable
Step 3: Set up Dunning Levels
Go To: Accounts Receivable (Setup Tab) > + Dunning Levels
Set up a separate dunning level for each of the 3 touchpoints listed above:
- Each level should have its own email template
- You may choose to send the invoice template from AR or OE (depending on which module you use to print invoices from).
- Optionally, set a minimum and maximum days overdue as well as a minimum or maximum invoice amount.
Note: custom printed document templates for dunning notices are available. For more on customizing document templates see this blog post.
Step 4: Testing
Go To: Accounts Receivable > Print or Email Dunning Notices
- Choose the As of Date, Dunning level to send, select whether to attach invoices to dunning notices
- Optionally, override the printed document template and/or email template
Override the “To” email address to update to a testing email > click Print or email
Step 5: Review Customer Record
Go To: Accounts Receivable/Order Entry > Customers > Dunning notices tab
View the related dunning notice associated with the customer record showing the level sent to the customer.
Step 6: Release to Production
Once you have tweaked the configuration to your liking, and everyone has been trained on the process, copy the configuration from the sandbox over to production and begin using the new process!
What’s Next
As we discuss assessing processes, recommendations, and design, it is worth mentioning that we at CLA offer Business Opportunity Assessments and Sage Intacct Assessments. Both of these services involve understanding your business’s processes today in order to make recommendations for improvements for the future based on our experience working with similar clients. For more information on BOA’s find that here! And of course, subscribe to the blog to receive the next post in our series and continue maximizing the value of Sage Intacct for your business.
The post Are You Maximizing the Value of Your Software? Building an Effective Collections Process appeared first on Sage Blog.
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