Credit Control & Advice
Cashflow is the life blood of any business, we have a service for both Large Corporates and SME’s alike.
RCU will decode complexity, investigate, identify and resolve issues in a professional, sensitive, and expeditious manner, whilst protecting ongoing customer relations.
Remote Court Users stands ready to help!
Forensic Debtor Account Reviews
Forensic Debtor Account Reviews
Protecting Cashflow
Forensic Debtor Account Reviews
One of the major challenges that a company has is debt visibility, it affects the relationship between the Buyer and Seller, creates a non-payment dispute and can open a company out to time, trouble, and expense, resulting in recovery or write-off.
We have experts in the field that can reconstruct the trading account, thereby removing ambiguity and dispute created by:
- Misallocation and general bookkeeping.
- System changes, unallocated payments.
- Multi account customers who settle with a single settlement.
RCU are experts in the field of Debtor Account Reconstruction and Reviews. We have successfully resolved accounts with legacy debts and unravelled transactions to evidence “True Debt” and save you costs in long drawn-out mediation. RCU’s aim is to be fair and equitable at all times during this process.
Protecting Cashflow
Take Back Control – Protecting Cashflow is the lifeblood of any business. We offer both in-person & onsite training together with online options to suit all budgets.
Working alongside your in-house credit control and account functions, to give you peace of mind to continue to trade.
RCU’s specialism covers:
1. Know Your Customer
2. Credit Control Collection Training and Upskilling
3. Managing Cashflow
4. Outsourcing your Credit Control Function to RCU
1. Know Your Customer:
It is essential to know the legal status of your customer and who is legally liable for payment of your invoices.
- Providing guidance on risk assessment processes, including onboarding of customers (all prospective customers should complete a Credit Application Form capturing all the data you need to undertake a credit check and, ultimately manage their account, including trading address, contact details, invoice authorisation process).
- Reviewing/introducing credit control policies and procedures (all business should have a company credit policy, signed off by the Board/owners, which sets out your mission, payment terms and the strategies for risk assessment, cash collection, monitoring the debts, maintenance of the sales ledger, such as cash allocation, managing disputes and debt recovery). View our training courses.
- It is important to build relationships with your customers in order that you know about their business and to ensure you are first in line for payment. This may lead to increased sales opportunities as well as protection of your cashflow by positioning your business to be at the forefront for receiving payment.
- Guidance on looking out for ‘red flags’ (this encompasses being alert to any instances of non-compliance by your customer such as not filing their accounts in a timely manner and recognising changes in a customer’s behaviour i.e., erratic payment dates, increased number of queries, to include the customer being difficult to get hold of).
2. Credit Control Collection training and upskilling:
(the SME may be a new business with inexperienced staff, or the credit control function may need further technical or personal skills training to empower them whilst chasing customers for payment).
- Collection techniques, including telephone (this embraces best practice guidance for all methods of contacting customers to ensure payments are made as near to terms as possible i.e., statements of account, emails, telephone calls, face-to-face meetings with a strong emphasis on investigation skills and following up promises and any action points agreed with a customer).
- Negotiation and influencing, dealing with excuses, assertiveness (in recent years, the credit control function has become tougher and as customers face many challenges which may impact their ability to pay you on time). It is crucial that the credit team can be forceful but not aggressive and be able to negotiate mutually acceptable instalment plans when the need arises.
- Post-training help centre (RCU is happy to accommodate Retainer requests), to help maintain regular touch points or follow up with clients who have had some training to analyse how approaches and outcomes are evolving in their credit control activities.
3. Managing cash flow:
(this covers education and guidance to SMEs on how to regularly prepare cashflow forecasts, budgets, and management accounts).
- Providing advice on managing cash (both inward and outbound) and pricing your goods and services for customers accordingly (helping SMEs to analyse the cost of sales, margins, analysis of other suppliers within your sector and the impact that late payment can have on cashflow and profits in equal measure).
- Negotiating with suppliers (helping customers negotiate favourable payment terms and prices with suppliers).
- Designing a robust ‘killer’ invoice (making sure the design, layout and content of the invoice is powerful enough to be able to be processed promptly for payment as this document is the ‘window’ into their business).
4. Outsourcing the credit control function to RCU
(in our experience, some SMEs prefer to outsource some or all aspects of the credit control and collection activity).
- On both a full time or interim basis, RCU has clients who have outsourced all or some of their credit control activity to us. Additionally, we can help SMEs to cover situations such as maternity leave at short notice.
- In whole or in part (clients have outsourced their Accounts Receivables function to us.