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• 11 Oct

  Credit Control Tips

  Credit control is a key part of the services that we find for our clients, therefore I am always on the lookout for credit control tips that we can share. Recently I have seen a couple of useful articles, listing some invoice chasing tips.

  You can also read our free guide to running your own credit control function.

  Chasing late Payments Without Awkwardness

  Veritas shared an AAT publication - "Chasing Late Payments Without Awkwardness". A great title, with some useful advice for people that don't like the awkwardness of calling due to invoices not being paid. These were a few of their tips that I picked out:

  1. Structure your billing to suit your customer. For example, some customers will be happy paying £250 per month, but will struggle to pay £3K in one go. Billing regularly can cut down on payment delays.
     
     
  2. Consider automated chasing software. This is clearly a good way to take the awkwardness out of chasing. There are plenty of automated customer chasing solutions and software to choose from.
     
     
  3. Make paying easy for customers. This could mean offering methods such as payment by Direct Debit - once its set up it just goes out on a regular basis.

  Credit Control Tips

  The other article was from our friends at TBOS (Total Back Office Solutions), they published a list of credit control tips including the following:

  1. Get the payment information from the client's accounts department up front, to minimise payment problems.
     
     
  2. Enable delivery reports and read receipts on emails. This one came up the other day when the person that chases our invoices mentioned that the customer had definitely seen the invoice - as they had received a read receipt. A really good, simple idea that we can all adopt.
     
     
  3. Ask customers to confirm that they have received the invoice. When things like invoices are sent by email, it only takes a glitch or an overactive spam filter to stop your invoice getting through. By asking for confirmation of receipt, you head off potential difficulties down the line.
     
     
  4. Calling the week before the invoice is due to confirm its received and will be paid. Also known as pre-dunning.
     
     
  5. If you can't get through to accounts, try the switchboard again and ask to be put through to someone else in accounts.

  By Glenn Blackman