Sorry, it's me again. You do not have to take a customer off credit hold to
process a customers order. Once the order is entered using Customer Credit
Manager, which is located in Accounts Receivable under General Operations.
It shows which customers are on credit hold, Orders, Payments, Contacts, and
Credit Info. They can remove one order or many without removing the
customer from Credit Hold.
There are many classes, companies that would provide assistance, and
philosophies about credit policies. I have found, being a bean counter
myself, that the objective of accounting, sales, production, and management
for extending credit are all different and in contradiction with each other.
Accounting wants to reduce the possible of acquiring bad debt that has to be
written off at the end of the year, reducing profit. Also, the continual
discussions with management about why the debt has not been collected and
how it got so old anyway. Accounting does not hire collection people, but
someone to do billing and post payments. Many times these people don't like
to call companies and ask for payment, it makes them uncomfortable. Also
they are so busy with other, more important activities that this falls to
the end. Usually when an account is well over 90 days old, sometimes not.
Sales just wants to get new orders. They are always very optimistic about
the company they are trying to sell to. Their goal is get the order in the
door and we will worry about collecting the money later. Also, they are
usually not the ones doing the collecting. Also when an account pays slow
or becomes uncollectable, they have already been paid their bonus,
commission, whatever, on the sale and the default in payment does not affect
them.
Production doesn't have any of these problems. They have an order, which
has created a job. The job needs to go the manufacturing process. They
need to order parts, schedule production and do something with the completed
product. If they have to wait on accounting to release the order when they
have received payment or made a decision to raise the credit limit or
whatever is causing the problem, they are not usually behind the eight ball
with purchasing materials, production scheduling, or both. Also if they
have gotten the job completed they need to ship the product which requires
the order to be removed from hold.
Management wants the sale, wants the money collected, wants the production
completed, wants the product shipped, but above all else does not want
anything else to reduce the bottom line PROFIT.
Credit Policy - wants you have accepted and order. That is good. You can
use this as leverage to get the customer to send you money, even if the
reason is because they are over their credit limit. Every company
understands this and will comply because that it what they would expect from
their customers. The problem sometimes comes when they have trouble getting
their accounting department to understand that you need money even when you
are not scheduled to get it so the order can be processed.
Once the order goes into production though your company has spent money and
resources, raw materials, burden, and labor, that they cannot recover unless
the order ships and the customer pays. Here you will get the logic that we
spent the money we might as well ship because the customer won't pay until
the receive the order anyway. You ship the order, they either continue to
pay slow, but at least you get your money sometime or heaven forbid they
don't pay at all and you have bad debt, which makes management unhappy.
Yours not their.
Credit decisions have to be made when the order arrives. Once the decision
is made to go forward then the die is cast. Many companies do not give
enough attention to issue of credit. The more volatile the economy the more
important credit policy, but the more intense the pressure from the above
groups. Service Master here in Chicago is closing their lawn care division.
The number one lawn care service in the country. It has been loosing many
too long and cannot continue. A little over a thousand people will loose
their jobs. Clearly they had the business, so it was either operating
costs, which consists of bad debt that was their down fall.
I am sure this was all more than you wanted to know. I will go back in my
closet again, but I just couldn't help but provide Credit Policy 101 for
anyone that really wanted to know.
Cameron A. Janish
Misha1
866-464-7421
cameron@...
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Lipham [mailto:
paull@...]
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2001 09:40 AM
To:
vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Off topic CREDIT HOLD
Hello all,
We are trying to get the credit lines for our customers nailed down.
There
are so many instances where the customers account is put on Credit hold
and
this involves accounting updating the customer's credit line to take
orders
off credit hold.
I was wondering if there is some type of service that I could point our
Bean
Counters to that would assist them in developing realistic credit
limits...
or if there is some formula or science to this at all. Currently the
people
in AR are just looking at the customers past performance and basically
guessing at a figure for the credit line.
Any ideas or input would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Paul Lipham
Alabama Specialty Products, Inc.
paull@...
256-358-5230
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