My customers owe me money
Lorna says…
It can be difficult to keep on top of your own bills, when your customers do not pay on time or worse, don’t pay at all.
There can be many reasons why your customer is not paying as expected.
We have found that it is often a simple matter of your invoice not being received by the customer. For whatever reason, the sales invoice has gone astray.
Similarly, the invoice may not have reached the person who should authorise the invoice for payment, and it does not then get processed as part of the usual system.
Your customer may be experiencing their own cashflow problems and may not be able to pay straight away.
Your customer may simply be overwhelmed with the amount of work involved in running their business, and just be behind in their job of paying the bills.
And there is often that one customer who will not pay their bill until they are followed up by a personal request to do so. Not all of us enjoy having to make that request either.
In our experience, these problems are most readily addressed by consistent review of your debtors/receivables list – making that weekly/fortnightly/monthly call to ensure the invoice had been received, that it has been received by the right person and if not, updating the contact details on your records and re-sending, offering payment plans to those experiencing cashflow problems, asking for the payment to be made promptly.
It can be a bit time consuming to begin with, but over time you will find that your outstanding receivables becomes much more manageable and your regular customers will know that they will be followed up for payment if they do not pay on time.
Swag Bookkeeping has a dedicated Accounts Receivable Manager available to contact your debtors on a regular basis, or to help you get back on top of things. Lorna is unfailingly polite to the customers she calls, but once she has established that the customer has the invoice and should pay, she is consistent and persistent.
If you think this is something that could help you get on top of your overdue invoices, please click on the Contact Us button, and we will be in touch to discuss what would suit you best.
