Debt isn’t like a fine wine!
Debt collections strategies all point to sooner is better. Debt isn’t like a fine wine, it doesn’t get better with age. Your accounts team should trigger their collections process beginning the day the account becomes delinquent. However, in the world of streamlining, reductions in staff, and increasing cost; just focusing on new clients becomes more difficult when bogged down with chasing old money.
According to the Dartnell Institute, the average cost of working an account internally over a six month period is $31.60 per account*. Compared to your own in-house process how do you stack up? Outsourcing this task will save you time and money and at a low cost per account you save yourself the hassle of dealing with the people who have stiffed you. Depending on the type and amount of claims you submit you could be having a whole team of professional collectors working your claims for an average of $7.00. You have now already saved over $20.00 by taking the first step. The biggest value add when dealing with flat fee collections is that you receive 100% of your money back.
Using this approach according to allbusiness.com’s article “The Business of Outsourcing for Small Businesses”, one of the major factors influencing the initiation of outsourcing is being able to focus on your core business. Trying to recover old money just wastes your time and money when you could outsource collections actions to professionals who integrate with you or your company to systematize the process of gathering up the past dues that are owed to you.
Think outside the box!
Think outside the box! Don’t continue with processes that may not be giving you the return you deserve. Drastically reduce your in-house costs and enable your staff to concentrate on the earlier aged receivables, correcting problems/disputes, new invoicing, etc., thereby ultimately reducing the number of accounts that would typically go into the 90 day category that probably never should have. In other words, they ended up there due to a dispute/problem or billing error that no one had time to look into.
Recap:
- Focus on your core business by outsourcing collections tasks.
- Save time and money using a flat fee approach to collections.
- Reduce the number of accounts reaching 90 plus days delinquent.
- Get the money owed you back faster.
- Play a proactive active role in your collections process.