B104.7 - Revenue Collection |
Collecting money for sales can be one of the best (or the worst) parts of business. It represents the physical exchange of energy, an important portion of the total energetic exchange in a transaction.
It starts with timing..
The collection options generally include:
It starts with timing..
- Is money paid in advance?
- Is money exchanged at as part of the product or service fulfillment process?
- Is money exchanged immediately after the product or service has been fulfilled?
- Is money collected well after product/service has been delivered?
The collection options generally include:
- Cash
- Check
- Credit Card
- Prepaid Account (and Gift Card/Certificate)
- Postpaid Account (Accounts Recievable)
- Third Party Billing
- Energy Swap
- Blood
1) Cash
- Do you have a cash box or cash register(s)?
- Do you have proper systems for maintaining a bank?
- Do you reconcile your bank daily, weekly or other?
- Do you have enough security around this process if it is significant?
- How does the cash make it to the bank?
2) Checks
- Do you have a place you save all checks as they are received from the customer or via the mail?
- Do you have a daily or weekly process for depositing checks?
- Do you need to worry about bounced checks?
- Do you have a way to recover a list of checks if they disappear between collection and deposit?
3) Credit Cards
- Do you have a merchant account and all relevant hardware needed? Do you need one? Do you know when and why you would need one?
- Do you know what your full effective rate is for credit card processing? Do you realize that most small businesses were getting robbed by the confusing billing systems related to merchant accounts?
- Have you ditched your merchant account for Square or comparable credit card processing? Is there ever a time to consider going back? If so, when and how do you shop for a new vendor?
4) Pre-paid Account (or Gift Certificate)
- Do you have a system for tracking advanced payments?
- Is it "good enough"?
- Is there any additional reporting required for it for audits, as is the case with Attorneys?
5) Post-paid Account (Accounts Receivable)
- Do you have a system for applying sales to a customer account?
- Do you have a system/routine for sending out paper statements/invoices?
- Do you have a system/routine for sending out electronic statements/invoices?
- Do you have a system/routine for sending out electronic statements/invoices that enables immediate payment with credit card or checking account (electronically)?
6) Third Party Billing
- Are you involved in a business with 3rd party billing?
- Do they always pay in full?
- if not, do you have a system for converting unpaid balances over to an Accounts Receivable ledger?
- Do you have a way of accounting for write offs?