AR automation allows managers to create, assign and monitor tasks directly from the CRM-like solution, collaborate with your team and co-workers as if you were in the office (minus the free coffee!). It also helps keep stakeholders up-to-date and ensures management can oversee team performance and ensure the collections strategy is correctly adapted to the situation.

Tip 7. Take care of your team!

Maintaining positivity and engagement within the team is not easy when people work remotely from different locations. Why not motivate your team with small challenges on cash collected? Reaching a goal as a team can be a great way to keep them motivated and make them feel part of a team.

Use internal forecast team goals to set up an amount to be collected weekly or monthly. Follow team activity and adjust workload as needed to help those who may be having difficulty.

You can be creative with your goals! Motivate your team with fun challenges. Set up rewards according to the percentage of achievements. If goals are 100% achieved, you can compensate the team when everyone’s back in the office!

For more tips on how you can effectively manage your AR process in challenging times download our eBook now  https://info.esker.com/eBookAR7Tips

Claire Barker

As Marketing Specialist for Esker UK, Claire is responsible for generating leads for Esker's business process solutions specifically within the area of Accounts Receivable through a variety of marketing channels. She has been part of the Esker family since 2019.

Read more insights from Claire Barker

Esker can help you to ensure your customers transition smoothly to e-invoicing and automate your invoice delivery process to meet both customer and compliance requirements.

Tip 4. Facilitate customer payments

In order to help customers who are struggling with cash flow, you may have to extend payment terms. Or, if you’re having cash flow issues, you may wish to offer early payment discounts to help motivate customers to pay you in advance. Anything that can help you get your cash back in is welcome.

Offering your customers the ability to renegotiate payment terms and/or spread their debt with you over a longer time period, helps create a relationship where customers are more likely to meet their payment obligations and, in turn, your business eventually secures revenue. Additionally, by providing early payment discounts to customers who are able to pay earlier, you maintain a healthy cash flow. By being customer-focused and easy to deal with, your customers will most likely want to do more business with you in the future.

Esker AutoPay plans give customers longer payment terms and you are more likely to receive payment at each installment due date — a win-win situation for both you and your customers.

For more tips on how to effectively manage your AR process in challenging times download the eBook https://info.esker.com/eBookAR7Tips

Continue reading our 7 Tips with Part 3 in this series of blogs.

Claire Barker

As Marketing Specialist for Esker UK, Claire is responsible for generating leads for Esker's business process solutions specifically within the area of Accounts Receivable through a variety of marketing channels. She has been part of the Esker family since 2019.

Read more insights from Claire Barker

We’ve compiled 7 tips to help you adapt your collections strategy, continue collecting cash, take care of your customers, empower your team, and come out on top (without being impacted too severely) and will be sharing a series of blogs over the coming few weeks with advice to help companies manage their receivables and collect cash in difficult times.

Tip 1. Reassess your receivables situation

While some customers have seen little change to their operations, others have been heavily impacted and, as a result, are struggling to pay their invoices. Fast action is imperative, but before diving in headfirst, you must take the time to analyse your business and understand what cash can be realistically collected, what customers you can talk to and who is at risk.

Start by analysing your customer portfolio to understand:

• Customers by industry – who are the customers most impacted?
• Outstanding balance by industry?
• Outstanding credit covered by insurance vs. uninsured total (evaluate potential loss)

Assessing your customers’ profiles and situations will help you better manage your credit risk and focus your resources where they need to be.

With an automated collections management solution customers can easily be grouped into categories such as industry, profile or other criteria that you may need, so you can create lists and reports on specific customer groups. This can be particularly useful to;

• Gain visibility on the total cash tied up within specific customer groups by creating aged balance customer listings
• Share reports internally to provide visibility to other stakeholders
• Get in touch with customers using appropriate methods

Having completed your business analysis you can begin to adjust your collections strategy.

Tip 2 . Adjust your collections strategy

Your collections strategy was established in the context of ‘ business as normal’. If the situation changes, your strategy must be adjusted to continue to bring efficiency to your cash collection process.

• Review the need for sending payment reminders vs. making collection calls and adjust your strategy accordingly
• Defer any calls that can be deferred (depending on customer situation and outstanding balance)
• Prioritise the largest amounts to collect or the riskiest customer groups
• Send dedicated messages to specific customers or group

With an automated collections management solution you can easily review and edit your collections strategy to better adjust to the situation at hand, for example:

• Enable or disable payment reminders for all or certain groups of customers
• Change the thresholds (value or days outstanding) to trigger an action such as calls and emails
• Refine your collection calls needed list by disabling low balances or low-risk customers
• Defer calls that can be deferred
• Use bulk messages to address more tailored communications to specific customers or groups

You and your team need an efficient collections process, especially if you are operating with fewer people. Your immediate objective is to collect all the cash that you can and help ensure all efforts are focused on achieving this you can suspend usual activities and switch to special collections mode with specific actions.

For more advice on how to effectively manage your AR process during these unprecedented times download the eBook here https://info.esker.com/eBookAR7Tips

Continue reading our 7 Tips with Part 2 and Part 3 in this series of blogs.

Claire Barker

As Marketing Specialist for Esker UK, Claire is responsible for generating leads for Esker's business process solutions specifically within the area of Accounts Receivable through a variety of marketing channels. She has been part of the Esker family since 2019.

Read more insights from Claire Barker