Tool
One overdue invoice, end to end
How many invoices come due a month, how many minutes chasing each one takes, what an hour of the person chasing costs, what share falls through unnoticed and what that costs. Below, the same invoice with an agent: where it goes, what it does at each step and what stays with a person.
One overdue invoice, end to end
- the agent does it
- a person does it
- always a person
the steps of the chase
- Build the day's overdue listReceivables
Looks at the whole ledger every day, not the part that fits in somebody's day, and sorts by age and amount.
- Send the first noticeWhatsApp
Goes out on the due date, through the channel where accounts payable actually answers, with the invoice detail.
- Follow up on a cadenceWhatsApp
Writes again after three days incorporating what came back, instead of repeating the same message until they stop opening it.
- Resend the invoice or the receiptEmail
When they say they never got it, sends it on the spot, which is the most common objection and the easiest to resolve.
- Read the payments and go quietBank
Checks credits before every message and stops chasing the moment the money lands, even if the system has not applied it yet.
- Log what came backCRM
Records what they said and when, with a date, which is what lets the next message start from somewhere instead of from zero.
- Negotiate a payment planReceivables
Agreeing installments or a discount is signing something. A person decides, on a case with the whole contact history in view.
Today that is 70 hours a month and 12 chases that go wrong. Between the time and what the error costs, USD 1,320 a month.
With the agent holding 6 of the 6 steps, 4 hours and USD 66 are left.
The difference is USD 1,254 a month, USD 15,048 a year.
And 36% of that difference is not time: it is the chases to people who already paid that stop going out.
Of what a person still does, the heaviest step is: Negotiate a payment plan.
You set all five numbers. How the minutes split across steps is ours, taken from how it gets done by hand. The modelling assumption: an error born of not checking the system before writing falls in the same proportion as that check stops being manual.
This object is the interactive half of an article: Collecting one overdue invoice is seven steps and none of them is hard