Working with Overdue Accounts

When you set up your payment terms and aging periods in the Settings window, you specified date ranges to help determine whether customer payments are late, and the rate of interest you will charge on overdue accounts. It is a good idea to regularly view or print a Customer Aged report to see whether you have any customers who are not paying their bills.

You can do that two ways: Within the Sales, Orders, Quotes window, click Help Menu, Advice, Customers with Overdue Amounts. Or, from the Reports menu, choose Customers and Sales, then Customer Aged.

How do I get paid?

• At the point of purchase, ensure you include late payment charge information on your invoices as an incentive to get your customers to pay on time.
• Offer customers a discount for paying early.
• Charge interest on overdue invoices.
• Review the Customer Aged report and phone those customers with overdue accounts to remind them of their overdue amounts. Find out whether a payment has been sent (the cheque may be lost in the mail, in which case the customer should cancel the cheque and mail a new one). If the customer mailed the cheque recently, make a note of the date the cheque was mailed, and call back in a few days if you do not receive it (you can set up a reminder on your to-do list). Record any notes or tracking details your customers provide.
• Set up a schedule and start sending overdue payment notices. If payment is not received within the requested period, you may want to turn the account over to a collection agency, or consider writing off the bad debt.Note that collection agencies generally keep 30 percent or more of the amount they collect. Use one only if the amount owed is large enough to warrant the effort, and if you do not believe you can collect on your own.