Managing the Collections Process - Part 2

Previous article: Settings for the Collections Manager - Part 1

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If a Paid Invoice is Still Appearing in the List

Once an invoice is paid in QuickBooks, as soon as Chronicle and QuickBooks link, the invoice should be automatically removed from the collections list in Chronicle. If an invoice has been paid in QuickBooks and is still here:

If the invoice was paid today: Updated information hasn't been sent from QuickBooks to Chronicle yet; it should be gone tomorrow.

If the invoice was paid yesterday: Make sure the Quickbooks bridge ran last night. If it didn't, contact our support to address the problem; once the bridge runs, the changes should be reflected.

If the invoice was paid on some earlier date: Make sure the payment was applied to the invoice in QuickBooks. Because a job can potentially have multiple invoices, a payment that isn't applied to a specific invoice doesn't count toward any invoice in Chronicle, even if the customer has a zero balance. The payment must be applied to a specific invoice to count in Chronicle.

Identifying Who Is Responsible for Payment: To indicate who is responsible for payment, either click Add/Change Who's Responsible at the bottom left, or right-click any job in the list at the top and pick Change Who's Responsible for Payment. On the payment screen, type an amount next to any name, or right-click any name to assign the full or remaining amount to that person. You can make either people or organizations responsible, and you can associate additional people or organizations with the job from this screen. To remove responsibility for any person after payment is made, edit the amount back to zero.

Making Phone Calls to the Responsible Person: Once you indicate that particular people or organizations are responsible for payment, you see the contacts, the amount that they are responsible for, and their phone numbers in the Payment Responsibility section at the bottom left.

Emailing the Responsible Person: Once you indicate that particular people or organizations are responsible for payment, you see the contacts in the Payment Responsibility section at the bottom left. Right-click any contact

Reviewing Collections Journals or All Journals: The grid at the top has the option of including the number of collections journals (emails or notes) and the date of the last collections journal. Once you select an invoice, you can see collections journals or all journals for the associated job at the bottom center of the screen. You can scroll through this list and scroll through individual notes to read the full text.

Adding Notes and Comments: Comments (shown in the grid) are slightly different from other notes or journal entries. If you type a comment in the comment column of the grid, that comment is added to the journal, but that comment also stays in the comments section until you replace it, even if you add other collections notes. This is a useful place to add any detail that you want to always have in view when you see an invoice in the collections manager. If you type a note at the bottom right (or if you add a collections journal for the job elsewhere in Chronicle), that note is also added to the journal, but as you add additional notes, the most recent note will obviously scroll further down the list. These notes are a great place to document anything that needs to be saved in the file to document phone conversations or other details that must be saved but that don't need to remain the first thing you see.

Adding Follow-up Dates: You can add a follow-up date for any invoice in three ways: You can right-click any invoice and pick one of the follow-up options toward the bottom of the menu. You can enter a date directly in the Follow Up Date column in the grid. Or you can pick a date in the Next Follow Up entry at the bottom right (adding a note below as well if you wish) and then click Save these Updates.

Once you set a follow-up date, you can find all invoices that need follow up with the Follow up needed filter at the top of the screen. You could also find invoices that need follow-up by clicking this column heading: this will put all invoices that need follow-up together. We also highlight invoices with invoices that have follow-up dates that are on or before today.

If you set a follow-up date and the invoice is paid, Chronicle automatically removes the invoice from the list, so you only see those invoices that actually still need following up.

Updating the Current Collections Action: In Chronicle's main setup, on the Activities tab within the Departments setup, you can define activities for each department. If you've setup up activities for the Collections department, you can pick these activities in the Current Action column in the Collection Manager to indicate what stage of collections each invoice is in. You would typically leave this blank until you find some indication that initial invoicing and initial phone call are inadequate. (Typical actions here would be: Send Letter 1, Send Letter 2, Send Letter 3, Small Claims, Collection Agency, Write Off Balance, and Customer Service Needed.)

Getting More Information about the Job or Responsible Person: To open the file for the job the invoice is associated with, double-click the job or right-click the job and pick Open File for Job.... To open the file for a person or organization that you've indicated is responsible for payment, right-click the contact in the Payment Responsibility section, and choose to open the file.

Collections by Responsible Person

The Group by Payment Responsibility view groups collection amounts by the person who's responsible for payment. For example, if a number of invoices are associated with a particular adjuster or mortgage company, this view groups together all of the invoices each person or organization is responsible for, so it makes it easier to follow up on multiple invoices with a single call and easier to identify those contacts responsible for the largest amounts.

This view doesn't necessarily show all invoices; it only shows those invoices where you've indicated payment responsibility, so you'll still need to use the List by Invoice Order view to see invoices that are not yet assigned.

To Assign Payment Responsibility

For the Group by Payment Responsibility view to work, you must assign responsibility in the List by Invoice Order view. To do this, either right-click the invoice and pick Change Who's Responsible for Payment, or click Add/Change Who's Responsible in the Payment Responsibility section at the bottom left of the screen.

Once you've assigned payment responsibility, then the invoice will be reflected for the corresponding people or organizations in the Group by Payment Responsibility view. If you assign responsibility to multiple people or organizations, the invoice will appear for all responsible parties (with the amount they're each responsible for) in the Group by Payment Responsibility view.