Lesson #61
Receivables – Collection Follow-up function
After running the Aged A/R report to find clients who owe you money and contacting them, start tracking your collections actions and your client’s responses in their records in your RB9 database. Use this function to pull up a list of past actions and reminders to keep collections tasks on track. You can go directly into individual firms from this function to get contact information, record their responses and promises, make notes, and set reminders for further follow up.
Instead of trying to remember who needs to be followed up with about an overdue invoice and when — or writing reminders in a separate calendar — use RB9’s collection tools including the Collection Follow-up function. Collection Follow-up lists all previous collections actions recorded in RB9 for all clients with overdue invoices within a specified date range.
You can see at a glance:
- Which firms with overdue invoices you have contacted/taken action on.
- What kind of action was taken and when.
- Who on your staff should be reminded to follow up with the client and when.
- Your designated collector on the account.
- Any notes about the action taken.
You can search Collection Follow-up by:
- Dates actions were taken
- Dates someone in your company was/will be reminded to take action by the internal notification system
- Types of action taken (such as call made or statement sent)
- Assigned collector
Listings in the results display the firm name followed by:
- Info from the search categories above
- Person responsible for following up
- Any notes made about the collection attempts
You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB9 will revert back to the default order). Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.
You can click any listed firm to view their collection history and other client information, such as their phone number. And you can:
- Record your current collections effort.
- Set a reminder date and time.
- Designate which staff to remind.
- Enter notes about the action/reminder.
At the designated time, RB9 will send the staffer an automated message through Notifications and Messages with a link to the firm’s records, so they can quickly take action.
Periodically review Collection Follow-up to see what progress is being made with overdue clients and if anything is falling through the cracks.
NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.
TL;DR: Keep your collection efforts on track by contacting overdue clients as scheduled, tracking responses and promises, and setting reminders.
RB concepts in this lesson
Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms.
