Healthy and efficient management of unpaid debts is essential for any company, whatever its size or sector of activity. Here are some major reasons why this is critically important:
Why controlling your unpaid debts is essential?
Keep your cash flow (and therefore your business) afloat
Poor management of unpaid debts can trigger a series of negative consequences.
When your customers do not pay you or pay you very late, this can quickly lead to cash flow difficulties .
Which in turn can affect the ability of the business to operate effectively.
This domino effect can extend to your supply chain and other trading partners.
Avoid unnecessary costs and wasted working hours
Every sale involves costs, and if a sale is not followed by payment, it can result in a net loss for the business.
In addition, if you have not put in place concrete measures and an effective process to manage your unpaid debts, you risk having to resort to more costly recovery procedures, such as legal recourse.
Not to mention the time spent chasing down your overdue payments.
Better manage your growth
If you have not (yet) put in place a precise process to manage your unpaid debts, as soon as the volume of customer invoices increases, it can become very complicated.
Your teams risk spending more time recovering amounts owed instead of more comprehensively identifying friction points and optimizations that can be implemented.
Recommendations from Blendy, your French digital accountant
Redefine your payment terms
To avoid unpaid bills, start by reviewing the payment terms you grant to your customers.
It seems obvious, but few companies really do it.
Make sure your invoices are clear, detailed and easy to understand.
Include all relevant information, such as products or services provided, dates, quantities, prices and payment terms.
Cash out faster
Favor collections in advance or offer payment facilities to your customers.
Encourage your customers to pay in advance by offering discounts or benefits in exchange. For example, offer a price reduction for payments made before a certain date. Or simply invoice your customers at the start of the month.
Offer your customers links to allow them to pay in 1 click.
You can also offer your recurring customers payment by direct debit every month. And for one-off customers, consider asking for a deposit.
Communicate with your customers
Regular communication regarding payments and due dates can build trust and transparency between the business and its customers.
If a customer is experiencing financial difficulties, take the time to understand their situation and offer appropriate solutions, such as an installment payment plan.
This helps build lasting, positive relationships.
Use the right tools
To further gain time and efficiency in managing your unpaid debts, we strongly recommend that you implement automated reminder and collection processes.
Here's why we recommend LeanPay and Pennylane:
Why LeanPay and why connect LeanPay to Pennylane
Proactive management of unpaid debts helps avoid these risks and possible losses. This is where LeanPay and Pennylane come into play.
LeanPay is much more than just collection software. It is a very comprehensive customer receivables management tool intended for financial teams and business managers.
This platform makes it possible to reduce the payment time by 30 to 20% and to divide the time spent on collection by 4. In addition, with LeanPay , the rate of unpaid invoices is less than 1%.
Pennylane is a financial management and accounting software that we highly recommend at Blendy .
Pennylane allows you to centralize and automate your finance process, from invoice management to cash flow forecasting.
If your business is located outside France, and you are using QuickBooks, we will be able to connect your QuickBooks also to LanPay. Talk with our team to learn more.
Automation of your customer reminders
LeanPay offers complete automation of the collections process. Once connected to Pennylane, it retrieves your invoices and activates your customer reminders.
LeanPay even allows you to create personalized scenarios and send reminders through different communication channels.
Real-time tracking
Thanks to Pennylane and LeanPay , you can monitor your customer outstanding, the average payment period and the aged balance in real time.
This allows you to anticipate delays and activate specific reminders in addition to those that you have already automated.
Simplifying payments
LeanPay simplifies payments for customers by offering an online payment portal.
PDF invoices can be downloaded and online payments are secure, whether by e-transfer or credit card.
Simplified recovery procedure
LeanPay makes it easier to launch a recovery procedure by automatically generating the necessary files and allowing simplified monitoring of the file status.
Connect LeanPay to Pennylane
If you already use Pennylane for your invoicing, simply connect LeanPay in a few clicks to synchronize your accounting and financial data between these two apps.
Thanks to this connection, Pennylane and LeanPay synchronize in real time to automate the transfer of data: invoices, credit notes, quotes, payments, contacts, customers, etc.
As an accountant specializing in digital applications and Pennylane in particular, we obviously support you throughout. Once synchronized we ensure that the data exchange is done correctly.
We also help you identify the optimizations that you can implement, the automatic processes to deploy and the monitoring KPIs, to make your management of unpaid debts faster and more efficient.
In summary, managing outstanding payments is a crucial aspect of the financial health and viability of your business. This goes beyond simply collecting payments and encompasses establishing efficient processes, communicating transparently with customers and preventing future financial problems.
Proactive management of outstanding payments greatly contributes to the long-term stability and growth of the company.
Contact us to discuss your needs and see together how we can help you!
With Blendy , digital accountant take advantage of all the advantages of digital accounting to accelerate your finance process and develop your business.
Pennylane , Dext , QuickBooks and Stripe experts, we support digital and IT service companies, e-Commerce, SaaS, SMBs, in France and internationally .
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