The role credit controllers play is collecting unpaid money from individuals or corporations who have failed to make payments on time. They also perform the function of looking after the financial side of a company to guarantee that accounts are kept fully up to date and are equally accurate. Consumer collection and commercial collection are the jobs of credit controllers. The first type of collection is the method or recovering debts from large businesses and companies while the second type of collection refers to the practice recovering debts from people/individuals who failed to make payments when it was due.
There are credit controllers who work for companies, usually in the finance or accounts department. Their job here will be making sure that customers and suppliers of the organization make payments on time as well as in full.
Late payers can seriously affect the spine of a business which is cash flow and also throw the future of the business into jeopardy. If you feel too uneasy or uncomfortable to make demanding phone calls, getting cut out too many times, and if you’re afraid of having your business thrown out of balance, then you need to a full-time credit controller who can do all that and even more. Research carried out on payment discovered that businesses that have strict credit control facilities were less likely to have late payment issues. So having a credit controller or a team of credit controllers is very vital to the success of a business. Below are some of the reasons why you should have a full-time credit controller :
The job of a credit controller starts even before the sale is even made. The credit controller will make sure your company or business has effective and up-to-date terms and conditions that can be supplied to a client and a suitable credit limit application form, so you can capture all necessary details about any new client right at the start of a business relationship.
If a customer has a healthy credit history and pays when due, your credit controller will help make a decision on the level of credit provided and suitable payment terms. When a sale has been made, your credit controller will contact the customer before the due date to ensure they are happy and to confirm that payment will be done as it has been agreed. And if the customer misses the deadline, your credit controller is then responsible for keeping contact and recovering the funds as soon as possible.
Just because a company has been a good player historically doesn’t mean that their position cannot change. Therefore, a credit controller also performs the function of regularly reviewing the status of existing customers in order to minimize risk.
With all that has been said, the credit controller naturally helps to reduce your debtor days, make those calls you feel uneasy to make and free to cash for growth and greatly reduce the risk of bad debt. The process of credit-control is not one which can be done for meager time, it takes hours and hours, days, weeks, and months to bring your business to desired heights and avoiding ruin in the long run. So you need to have a full-time credit controller if you intend your business to get the right results. Good credit-control is also based on building relationships with your customer over time and creating a strong understanding and rapport with them which is equally the job a Credit controller achieves with enough time given.
