Deal with Collection Accounts Before Holiday Hoopla

The holidays can be stressful and busy. It’s so busy that the holiday season requires an almost endless list of lists: shopping lists, grocery lists, and your general To Do List. And that’s just for your personal life. Throw your business’ hectic office environment into this mix, and you’ll stress levels are almost guaranteed to rise.

It’s easy to forget things around the office in this atmosphere. Things pile up or get set aside. More than one of IC System’s clients has mentioned being “just too busy” to deal with their past-due accounts around the holidays. But now is perhaps the most important time of all to make sure your past-due accounts are getting placed with a collection agency sooner.

Submit Sooner, Recover More

In our experience, debts are most collectible within the first 90 days of delinquency. After the first 90 days, the value of those accounts are worth just 87% of their original value. The value decreases even more (to just 33%) after 120 days.

It’s Easy to Ignore

So let’s say there’s a new past-due account that just came across your desk. It’s 30 days past due. Normally, you might make a few calls on it, send a letter or two, and then send it to a collection agency. But now the holidays are coming. You’ve got a few days off here and there. End-of-year workloads begin to stack up. And let’s face reality—your productivity isn’t what it should be, because you’re spending an eyebrow-raising amount of your workday daydreaming about presents. Hey, we all do it.

By the time mid-December rolls around, you meant to call on that past-due account but got caught up in the holiday hoopla instead. It happens. But if you’re not submitting your bad debt accounts by this time, chances are you won’t get your accounts submitted within the ideal 90-day delinquency period. At this point, the one or two calls you’re able to make aren’t going to produce much. After all, you don’t have all day to make collection calls, and your past-due customers have busy holiday schedules too. So already your chances of recovering the collection account are decreasing more and more.

All the more reason to get past-due accounts to IC System now. If we start collecting on your delinquent inventory right away, we can make payment arrangements before tax season arrives. Our representatives can negotiate payments for now or just after the holidays when people start receiving their tax refunds. Best of all, it’s one less item you have to think about this holiday season.

Here’s the thing

It’s already hard enough to collect past-due accounts. Why make it more difficult by waiting? Make it easier on yourself and your office. Get the debts to a collection agency early. Check that box off your To Do list. Clear the pile on your desk. Get your boss’ email titled “What’s going on with our accounts receivables?” out of your inbox. Do this, and we’ll be able to collect better for you, and you’ll be able to concentrate on what’s important this holiday season.

To learn more about when to submit accounts to a collection agency, download IC System’s eBook: A handy trail guide to faster payments and increasing cash flow.