A QuickBooks Question: What Do You Need to Manage Credit and Collections Better?

If you're in charge of the credit and collections management for your business, you probably have a wish list of what you'd like to see in QuickBooks that isn't there today. 

Would you care to share your ideas on this topic? What needs do you have that are NOT being met in QuickBooks today when it comes to managing customers and credit?

As you may know, some of the existing features of QuickBooks to help you administer these activities include:

• The credit limit field and related warnings if the customer is about to exceed that limit (but the order is not stopped from processing)
• The use of the notes area to log your customer interactions and keep a good history of your communications
• The various reports found in the Customers and Receivables section, especially the Collections Report and the Open Invoice Report
• The 2010 version of QuickBooks allows you to attach documents to invoices, customer accounts, etc. to keep a handy digital record of important information relating to your customers

What's missing? What else might you need to better manage the credit and collection activities in YOUR business?

Feel free to post your comments below. Others may be wishing for the same things you are in QuickBooks.

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Scott Gregory has been helping businesses figure out how to use QuickBooks the RIGHT way since 1999.

Comments

[Scott Gregory, QuickBooks Expert]

Caren:

Just wanted to make sure you had seen the Collections Report in QB.

While it doesn't provide all of the information you listed, it offers a good start at getting the basics in place to "dial for dollars".

It is found at Reports > Customer and Receivables > Collections report.

Scott Gregory

[Scott Gregory, QuickBooks Expert]

Joanie, Danielle, and Caren:

Thanks for your feedback on this issue.

Just curious - have you ever looked into the QB add-on at www.ARConnection.com? While this service doesn't directly address some of your concerns, it does seem to help with the automation portion of credit and collections.

Scott Gregory

[Danielle Kenyon]

Scott-

My clients need, at minimum - all in one report/screen: the collections report now extant in QB; enhancements to that report that would keep track of 1) a series of collections "scripts"; 2) a history of collections activities for each customer/job with date of activity and who called them, who they talked with at the customer's, what the customer promised to do and by what follow-up date; a space for the current "agent" to add a new record to that activity. It would be helpful to have a process for escalating collections activities based on customer-selected criteria (aging, open balance amount, follow-up date, number of collection attempts, etc.)

Thanks for posting on NAN and following this!

-Danielle

[Caren Schwartz]

In order to make collection calls, need to be able to see what invoices are past due along with customer contact information, payment history and possibly notes. This is not available in one place in QuickBooks. You can look in the customer center but then you need to know which clients to look at and you don't have a single printout.

[Joanie Mann]

A specific process for credit and collection calls would be great - allow an operator (not necessarily a full accounting operator; maybe even a contract worker) to generate collection call report based on various criteria (aged AR info, perhaps even locale-based info, to streamline calls across various time zones) - provide notes (date/time stamped with operator name) to facilitate keeping collection call notes and data... store payment arrangements or promises to pay, etc. The operator would need to be able to drill into the data (invoices, payment histories, etc.), but wouldn't be in a position to actually touch the accounting data.

[Scott Gregory, QuickBooks Expert]

Hi Stu:

If you are using QB 2008 or newer, those versions integrate directly with Outlook or Outlook Express to provide more control over your e-mailing out of QB - it still sends it as a PDF attachment to an Outlook message. You can still “save as PDF” and attach in these newer versions as well if you like.

If you opt to upgrade, save 20% via my web site at www.BetterBottomLine.com/software.html

Scott Gregory

[Stu McFarland]

I agree with the above... plus, we would like to have "Average Days to Pay" on each customer.
Is it true that one can send QB reports (say an invoice) with Outlook vs. the QB pdf file?

Stu
Etched Images, Inc.
Napa, CA

[Greg Patt]

In order to track how well my overall collection activity is going, it would be great to have a payment aging for ALL of the accounts as well as each account individually. So for example, I could run a report that says the average age of all my open or closed receivables (I want to choose) is 62 day as of now. Well, last month is was 74 days so my efforts are worthwhile. Then I would want to drill down and get a report of what the aging is for each customer in that list that owes me money. I can now do that last piece with the Receivables summary or the collections report, but not the OVERALL age of all accounts combine, open or closed.

putting it on the Aging summary report would be an ideal place to put it.