Is your station struggling with managing collections? The industry has a high average days to pay at 72. It could actually be longer, and those past dues suddenly become a collection issue.
There are many ways to prevent collections, including pre-payments, accepting electronic payments, setting specific terms and open communication. However, once an account is in arrears, stations have little time to devote to recovery. Outreach may be inconsistent even for stations that partner with sales in collection attempts.
Since you’re likely doing more with less, there are technology tools you can apply to help with managing collections.
Sending All Invoices Electronically
The more you can get advertisers to adopt electronic invoices, the better. It ensures the bill arrives promptly, and there’s a digital record of sending. If you’re still printing and mailing these, you’re already adding days outstanding.
Your station can achieve this by:
- Automatically defaulting to digital invoices for every new customer
- Sending communications to existing customers about switching to electronic with FAQs
- Using an electronics payment platform that has a customer portal that they can manage
Providing Customer Portals
Customer portals create a secure space for review and payment of invoices. They can create an account to manage any information. Alternatively, they can use the portal for guest checkout. In either case, they’ll be able to choose the invoice to pay and remit via ACH, debit card or credit card.
Enabling Pre-Payments
A pre-payments tool avoids collections and allows salespeople to send the request to customers. As part of your electronic payments platform, the pre-payments feature includes:
- One-click to request a pre-payment for a customer in the system with the ability to include a description and your logo
- Recording all pre-payment requests
- Filtering of requests by date, status or salesperson
Empowering Sales with a Collection Tool
Managing collections with the support of sales can dramatically improve your payment rates. The seller usually has the best relationship with a customer. Their outreach is less likely to be ignored, but sales teams are busy and can’t spend hours waiting for reports that may be inaccurate.
A collections tool makes all the difference. With such a feature, salespeople would see only their accounts with past-due balances. The information is in real-time, so it’s a true representation of collections.
They’ll be able to filter by client type, aging bucket, stations and more. Once they select an outstanding amount, the tool allows them to launch an email from the platform with a payment request, generate a guest checkout link or process a payment.
The technology streamlines the process for sales to assist with collections. Salespeople can carve out a few minutes every day, which could result in reducing days outstanding. It eliminates the need for report queries and removes friction from the payment process.
Managing Collections with PayNow
All the smart technology described above is available with PayNow. It’s an integrated payments solution that supports the entire payment life cycle securely. If you want to get paid faster and address collections quickly, PayNow is the answer.
Learn more by watching our PayNow video!
