When your invoice is sent to someone who is no longer at the company
By: Chris O’Brien — FinanceFuel Team
Here’s a situation that happens far too often in the world of Accounts Receivable.
A company will send over an invoice and hear nothing back for 30 days.
Month 2: Still nothing.
Month 3: Radio silence.
Finally, the business owner or the Accounts Receivable rep hops on the phone. Calls the main line. Asks for their point of contact.
The reply?
I’m sorry, they actually left the company months ago…
When someone puts in their two week’s notice, here’s one thing that’s rarely ever said: Ok, before we do anything else, let’s make sure all of our vendors know the news and give them a detailed breakdown of where to send their invoices.
Because of this confusion and lack of outreach, these are the types of invoices that end up reaching 90-days or 120-days past due. All because of a personnel change and some miscommunication. Depending on the size of the deal, this delay can have a huge impact on your business’ cash flow.
So here are a couple ways to get ahead of the scenario.
Do monthly checks on job status
At the end of each month, pull up your overdue invoices and search on LinkedIn for your main point of contact. Make sure their current company hasn’t changed and confirm that their job title makes sense.
Granted, not everyone has a LinkedIn account, but this will work most of the time.
Does this sound like a time-consuming, incredibly tedious task? We think so too. And that’s why you can have FinanceFuel do it for you.
Ask for a back-up early, throw in a joke
Send an email to your main point of contact with the subject line, “You deserve a vacation.”
In the body of the email, ask the question, “So, when you finally go on that 3-week cruise of the Mediterranean Sea, who should we send the invoices as your back-up?” Chances are they’ll reply with a name. And probably a smiley face.
Or for the times you receive an out-of-office with a back-up listed, jot the name(s) down. These become your go-to resources if the other person leaves.
Again, kind of tedious to keep track of? Want someone else to send out those emails for you? FinanceFuel’s got you covered.
If you’ve noticed a common theme here, yes, both of these steps are more work but two pieces of good news:
- It will save you time and money later
- FinanceFuel can run all of this for you
Other insights from FinanceFuel
What is FinTech? And how does it impact your finance department?
Top Five Things to put in an Invoice
Five Tips for Sending an Invoice
FinanceFuel accelerates a business’ cash flow by speeding up Accounts Receivables. You can get started on your report card here. We remove the remedial processing and collection tasks so employees can focus on high-value work driving the business forward. You can learn more about FinanceFuel on our website or, if you’re interested in speaking directly with a member of our customer success team, send us a note (sales@financefuel.co) and we’ll get back to you right away. Thanks for reading the blog, we’ll have regular content up on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
