This utility provides a single option that allows you to chase debts easily. It selects the accounts which are overdue, allows you to send statements for increasing severity of debt, mark accounts as ‘on-stop’, and record comments and notes of conversations with the customer. This feature ties in with a few other sales ledger options – record the saved aged analysis breakdown on the account and to control the details printed on a statement based on age of debt.
Note
The system allows you to age transactions on either the invoice date or the due date. For this option you can only age on invoice date where you have identical credit terms for all accounts / transactions and these terms match the ageing period for your first aged analysis slot – i.e. 30 days credit and 30 / 60 / 90 are your ageing terms. If you offer different credit terms then you need to age on the due date for this option.
On selection of this new option you may, depending on configuration, be prompted for some initial options.
This option uses the ‘Save Aged Analysis’ values on the customer record to select the accounts that are overdue. The configuration options allow you to check that if this process has not been run in the last n days to offer to re-run on selection of the Credit Control Manager option.
Note – the update of the saved aged analysis details requires exclusive access to the sales accounts file.
You may have differing types of customer for which you set flags on the customer record – Trade-Y/N, Distributor-Y/N, Retail-Y/N, etc. The Credit Control Manager allows you to select whether to include / exclude these accounts based on these flags (up to five flags can be shown). You can also use text and date items to filter on
Each prompt has options to ‘Include’ or ‘Exclude’ – if include is set then only those accounts where this item is set to ‘Y’ (or not blank for text/date items) are shown, if exclude then only those accounts where this item is not ‘Y’ (or blank) are shown.If neither option checked then this flag is ignored (i.e. all accounts are processed – dependant on settings of other flags).
The selection options are ‘compulsory’ checks, if you set the include option for both ‘Trade-A/C’ and ‘Distributor’ then both flag items must be ‘Y’ before the customer record is included.
Once any initial selections have been made the overdue accounts are displayed.
All the overdue accounts are listed with the amount they are overdue and the number of days overdue of the highest outstanding transaction. The list shows:
A/C – the customer account code
Name – the customer account name
M – flag of ‘M’ if a ‘Debtors Memo’ is recorded against the customer
S – flag of ‘S’ if customer account is ‘on-stop’
Credit Terms – usual credit terms for the customer
Overdue – the total value of transactions overdue
Days – the age of the highest overdue transaction
Last-Pay – date of last payment recorded against the account
30-Day/60-Day/90-Day – these columns show the date this particular statement was printed. The names may be different on your own systems based on the criteria you choose (say) 30-day, 7-day warning, Legal warning, etc. Up to five levels of statement warning can be configured.
X – flag if the customer set not to receive a statement
Defer – if you’ve previously contacted a customer and they’ve promised payment by x date then you can record this date against the customer record and this is displayed here.
Comment – short comment for display (the Debtor Memo can be used for longer notes).
Selected columns – Memo / Stop / Last Pay / Comment – can be
omitted from display. Depending on
screen resolution and items displayed the system will reduce the display size
of the comment (if shown) to a minimum of 10 characters before the system
begins to reduce the display size of the account name within the pick list
Note
Screen resolution should ideally be set to 1024x768 for this option as otherwise selected columns such as account name and comment will not be displayed in full.
Options at the bottom of the screen allow you various facilities against the highlighted customer record.
This option displays selected details from the customer record. It would likely include customer contact details – telephone number, fax number, email address and contact name, together with balance and credit information.Up to fifteen items from the customer record can be displayed.
At this point you can press the ZOOM button to transfer to the Desktop Sales Account Ledger Enquiry for this customer or OK to return to the list
The Enquiry option takes you to the Sales Ledger Account Enquiry for this customer. You can also access the ledger enquiry from here using the F8-Zoom key. <Esc> takes you back to the list.
Debtor Memo allows you to enter notes about your contact with the customer. The entry procedures are similar to the standard memo functionality.
The memo is created as a ‘Debtors.rtf’ file within the associate file location for the customer account (this location is based on the MSWORD path set within the DATAFILE.INI).
This option allows you to set an account as ‘on-stop’ which prevents further invoices being posted against the customer (if the account is already on stop you can release it here also).
This option allows you to enter a short comment (20 characters) that appears in the list.The idea is that you can enter ‘Call Friday AM’ etc. as a note to contact this particular customer at a certain point next time they are in their office etc.
Additional options allow you to set whether this customer does not receive a statement, enter a deferred date and amend/clear statement printed dates.
These buttons allow you to print a selected statement for the highlighted account. The actual options shown may vary based on your requirement (i.e. as discussed above you may have a 30-day statement, 7-day pre-legal warning, legal warning, account termination document, etc.) – up to five different statements can be called / configured. Note that the transactions printed on the statement depend on the configuration of the selected document.
If the selected document has already been printed you will be prompted whether you wish to replace the recorded date with today’s date, or keep the original date on file (the statement always being printed with today’s date.
Exit from the Credit Control Manager.
Notes
Comments and Statement Dates are cleared when the ‘save aged analysis’ routine is run and no overdue transactions are found on the account.
To mark an account on-stop, update a comment, or print a statement requires exclusive access to the account record.
Article ID: 1315
Created On: Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 11:26 AM
Last Updated On: Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 3:53 PM
Online URL: https://kb.datafile.co.uk/article/credit-control-manager-s-l-only-utilities-1315.html