Do You Know How to Improve A/R Management in Your Firm?

Take this quiz.  It will give you some insight on how well your firm is dealing with its accounts receivables.
(1) ______ and ______ follow-up efforts are the key to making progress with A/R over 90 days.
(2) Informative A/R reports need to provide firm leadership accurate information that shows collection activity is ______ on each account.
(3) If administrative stafff are assigned or hired to help with collection efforts, determine how many actual ______ they are collecting, especially the ______ accounts.
(4) Law firms lose clients by doing ______ work or ______ client service -- not by asking clients to pay their bills.


Answers:
(1) Dedicated and consistent efforts are needed on accounts over 90 days. Mistakenly firms tend to focus their efforts on those clients that pay timely and avoid working with older accounts because they take time and are often not pleasant to deal with.
(2) Reports that help a firm understand collection activity is making progress should include information on whether accounts are being actively pursued, what the payment status is, who is pursuing collections and what success they are having, why clients are not paying, and what steps need to be taken to get them to pay.
(3) Staff should be evaluated on actual dollars they are collecting and the number of older accounts they are handling, along with their knowledge of how best to pursue collection efforts. Staff should not be evaluated on such things as how well they:  send copies of bills to paying clients, multi-task other accounting duties, or provide attorneys with A/R reports.
(4) Poor work and failing to deliver client service are factors that directly contribute to clients not paying. However, managing receivables by directly contacting clients about unpaid bills will not hurt relationships -- as long as the communication is handled professionally.

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