Outsourced credit control? How to automate your credit management
Thinking about outsourced credit control?
Credit control is the solid foundation that a finance team should be built around.
How else can your business pay its expenses if you’re not being paid for the work you’ve done?!
Given how critical credit control is to all businesses you would be shocked at the amount of companies that either overlook credit management or struggle to find the time and resource required for a watertight credit control process.
But the fact you’re reading this article shows that you’re switched on and understand how vital it is to your business!
Outsourced credit control
Imagine you’re not paid on time for a substantial bit of work. Your cashflow forecasts get messed up and now you’re left scrambling to find cash urgently needed for expenses and wages.
It’s a position too many businesses find themselves in too often. And it’s only at this point they recognise the magnitude of having a sound credit control process mapped out and followed.
Credit control is often neglected, for a few reasons.
Time, staff, resources and a lack of understanding are the main causes for this. The sad reality is most businesses don’t understand that they need a credit control function until it’s too late.
These barriers mean an outsourced credit control solution is appealing.
You save time by allowing credit control specialists to take care of your sales ledger and chase outstanding amounts and a team of credit management professionals will run your credit control function without the need to hire additional staff.
However, this can feel like a big step, especially for smaller businesses.
Why outsource when you can automate your credit control in-house!
Instead of outsourcing what if there was a way for all your credit control to be automated, whilst still giving you complete control?!
Know-it makes credit management simple by automating the complete credit control process. It eliminates the need to hand over the reins of a part of your business to a third-party. Even if the expertise lies there, business owners can be sceptical and prefer to have complete control over all areas of their business.
Automating your credit management allows you to keep complete control whilst saving time and ensuring you followed a tried and tested process.
Another huge benefit is the fact that it’s much more cost-effective than using an outsourced credit control solution. Know-it is accessible to businesses of all sizes so there’s no longer any barriers to implementing a robust credit control process that will get you paid quicker and boost cashflow!
Automating your credit control
A solid credit control process doesn’t need to be complicated, in fact the most effective processes are streamlined!
Credit control can be broken up into three simple steps; Check-it, Chase-it and Collect-it.
These are the three components of Know-it:
Check-it
Check-it allows you to credit check the companies you do business with using Creditsafe, the world’s most used provider of online business credit reports.
And since company credit reports are continually in a state of flux Check-it automatically monitors your reports and lets you know as soon as anything changes!
This is great, right! You’ll always be kept in the know about your customers’ credit information and track record for making payments on time.
But Check-it goes a step further. We also include unique data insights not available in standard credit reports. We include Unsecured Creditor Claims data which identifies losses suffered by a business as a result of their customers going into liquidation or administration.
By automatically alerting you to these losses suffered by your customer, you’ll be able to see potential issues with your customer not being able to pay you before they become a problem, allowing you to act quickly to increase the likelihood of their payment reaching you on time.
Our automatic company matching even pulls data from Companies House and notices from The Gazette so you’re instantly alerted to significant events regarding your customers including administrations, liquidations and potential fraudulent behaviour.
Chase-it
The next step in credit control is chasing payments when they’re overdue.
No one likes to do this job. It’s time consuming, you’re likely under pressure because payment hasn’t been made on time and really, it’s not a job you should need to do in the first place if payment was made on the date agreed!
Chase-it alleviates this pain by automatically sending payment reminders and chasers according to your own personalised schedule.
Our seamless integration with leading accountancy packages including Xero, Sage, Intuit QuickBooks and FreeAgent means Know-it understands which invoices are overdue, their due date, how much is owed and by whom. All your Chase-it emails, SMS and letters are fully customisable so you can add a personal touch.
Plus, our Microsoft 365 integration means you can send your Chase-it emails from your own mailbox!
Collect-it
In the event you hit a brick wall trying to chase outstanding invoices you need to have a plan for recovering the money you’re rightfully owed.
Collect-it is powered by UK leading commercial debt recovery specialists Darcey Quigley & Co who have over 15 years’ experience collecting commercial debts in the UK and around the world!
The Collect-it process is simple. Send your unpaid invoice to Collect-it in one click. Your case will then be actioned within 1 hour and the team at Darcey Quigley & Co will get straight to work on recovering what you’re owed!
What are you waiting for?
As you can see automating your credit control process is simple, saves you a ton of time and is cost-effective whilst still ensuring you have complete control over it.
Know-it makes credit control accessible by bringing in company and credit data from multiple reliable sources into one place. Previously you’d need multiple subscriptions and different tools to manage all aspects of credit control.
Know-it is 1 cloud-based platform with everything you need.
Sign up free today and get a company credit report!
Lynne is the Founder and CEO of Know-it!
She is a passionate, driven and forward-thinking entrepreneur determined to help resolve the late payment crisis gripping SMEs.
Having worked within the credit management industry for over 27 years and ran UK leading commercial debt recovery specialists Darcey Quigley & Co for over 16 years, Know-it was devleoped to make credit control more accessilble for SMEs to help them effectively mitigate credit risk, reduce debtor days and boost cashflow!
Connect with me on LinkedIn!
