How To Improve Your Accounts Receivable Management?

Accounts receivable management is an integral function of any organization that can significantly impact the business's bottom line. Proper AR management minimizes past due accounts ensuring that payments are made on time consistently. If you are neglecting your company's accounts receivable management for any reason, it's time to give it the attention it deserves.

Set clear terms from the start

No business likes to have several outstanding invoices or delinquent payments. It's best to set clear payment terms with your regular clients to ensure bills are paid on time. This way, you'll get timely payments and enough cash left over to cover your current obligations.

Send polite reminders to your clients

You can improve your accounts receivable by being more predictable with communication. Always send expected payment dates via email, call, or text message so that you know when payments will be made. Also, don't wait until an invoice is past due to contact the customer. Tell them their next bill may be doubled if they haven't paid their previous one.

Simplify the payment process

By offering various ways to pay, you will make the payment process easy and secure your customers' transactions, allowing them to keep coming back to see what other services you offer. Let your customers pay you through different payment platforms like wire transfer, PayPal, Stripe, or simple bank transfer.

Negotiate with customers to find what’s holding them

Sometimes customers may also experience debt issues because most clients aren't honestly trying to scam you; they may be experiencing a family emergency, business loss, or bank issue that's stopping the payment. Negotiate with them diligently to know what's holding them back from making a payment and decide on a case-by-case basis whether the payment period should be extended or not.

Remodel your pricing plans

One of the most effective ways to improve your accounts receivable management is by reviewing your pricing model and creating payment programs for your customers. You can offer different payment plans that give your clients a set amount of time to pay you back for their debts. You can then adjust or extend those deadlines based on the future actions of the client.

Hire a collection agency when necessary

Collecting debts is one of life's most contentious, complex, and unfortunate events. A collection agency might be necessary when persistent phone calls and letters are not "working." Hiring a skilled and experienced collection agency can help you collect unpaid debts, maintain better cash flow, and do better in terms of credit without sacrificing good customer relationships.

Nurture good relationships with your clients

Having poor customer relations could affect your company's client retention and its ability to get good deals in the future. Good AR management fosters healthy customer relations and improves your business's reputation. Create an effective AR management plan to help your staff focus on delivering high-value work to your clients, thus supporting your bottom line.

Implement receivables management software

Implementing accounts receivables management software like Upflow can have significant benefits for a company. It can help them sustain positive cash flow and accurate financial statements, enabling them to make more informed decisions in the future. It lets organizations track invoices and facilitate automated vendor payment with minimal manual intervention. The reports generated by this software are detailed, so a business can have insight into where their most apparent potential problems are coming from - incorrect allocations or improper endings.