Processes – AR – Collections – Workflow

We had shared a collections workflow in an earlier post last week.

https://faoblog.com/processes-ar-collections-workflow/

We share some reader comments with you and our responses on the same. We had intentionally not added the requisite swimlanes and it really triggered a few discussions. Technically, one simple workflow cannot do justice to a collections process, it has to be split into multiple distinct sub components.

Let’s read these comments:

Comments:

André Browne through Operational Excellence group of LinkedIn

• The process flow would be much easier to follow (and would take less space) if you’d used a deployment flowchart.

Author Response: You are absolutely correct.

Jamal Khalil through Operational Excellence group of LinkedIn

• The workflow doesn’t show the actors and the steps in the process? Are all those activity done by one person or are they all automated and don’t need any humain intervention? Otherwise, by showing the actors and steps you can see how your process is broken and what are the V.A and NVA activities.

Author Response: Let me prepare and share with you another swimlane shortly.

 

Corey Crispe through Order to Cash (O2C) Group of LinkedIn

• Great workflow! I have Just one area of concern that we work with consistently. How do you ensure that the debtors’ payment is not currently sitting in the lockbox and / or accounts receivables workflow waiting to be applied before the collections call is made?

Author Response: Corey, you have raised a genuine concern. Normally all initial reminder calls / letters have a clause stating that “Please ignore this in case if you have already paid” and the next step is to get the payment details and apply that cash. This helps tackle such a situation.

Peter O’Donnell FInstSMM through Continuous Improvement, Six Sigma & Lean Group  of LinkedIn

• You can get a web application/service to manage this and any other workflow between companies, systems and other processes. If interested, please contact me peter@mediaimpression.eu.

Author Response: Thanks Peter for sharing this.