Accounts Receivable Management

Course Introduction

Accounts Receivable and Collections have a significant impact on the bottom line of all small, medium and large businesses.  In most companies, account receivables comprises 40% to 60% of the balance sheet, yet the risk management of this valuable asset is often not proportionate to its financial importance.

In this interactive Accounts Receivable training, participants will become thoroughly grounded in all aspects of Account Receivable administration, cash application, credit management and the collections process.

Course Objective

This Accounts Receivable training course aims to enable participants to achieve the following objectives:

• Understand and apply the fundamentals of Accounts Receivable systems
• Accounting and working capital optimisation
• The importance of credit to the company and the economy
• The “cost of credit” and its impact on company profitability
• Practical steps that reduce bad debt losses and “uncollectible” debtors
• Learn the importance of training of everyone in the total A/R process
• How to use different tools and techniques to maximize cash collection effort
• How to effectively manage cash and working capital to reduce costs and improve cash flow
• Analyse the need to incorporate risk and uncertainty in to accounts receivable analysis
• Understand why the use of a loss mitigation company is only a matter of “when” not “if”
• Identify best practice across all industries

Content

An introduction to Accounts Receivable

• Working Capital and Cash Management
• Understanding “the cost of credit”
• The ‘order to cash’ process
• Understanding “risk” in “credit”
• Accounts Receivable and effective customer service
• Identifying under-performing areas to increase customer satisfaction

 Customers and trading terms

• Terms of trading
• Tools and techniques of financial analysis: ratios; trends; common size analysis
• The best performance measure – cash or profit?
• Financial distress and the Altman’s Z score-type analyses
• Trend analysis
• Value added analysis of financial statement

 Developing effective strategies to maximize cash collection

• Identifying effective “pre-delinquency” collection campaigns
• Defining “post-delinquency” activities
• Customer sensitive collection strategies
• Collection techniques and letter cycles
• Appropriate internal and external escalation steps
• Using work flow management to maximize collector performance

 Practical collection tools and techniques

• Eliminating barriers to payment
• Recognizing excuses and delaying tactics
• Providing solutions to non-payment
• Telephone collection techniques
• Negotiation skills for successful collections
• Building relationships with customers

    Managing the Receivables Ledger

• Developing effective internal relationships to maximize performance
• Setting targets and tracking performance
• Managing information that dazzles
• Defining meaningful KPI’s
• Latest Developments in Accounts Receivable

Duration

Five Days

Target audience

• Finance Executives and Professionals
• Accountants
• Accounts Receivable Managers
• Accounts Receivable Supervisors
• Accounts Receivable Personnel
• Others who are working within accounts receivable process or who wish to develop a practical toolkit to complement their existing professional or technical skills