Blanket approach. (Entrepreneur's Notebook).If five people have to approve an invoice, send copies of the invoice to all five. If you know a company requires original proof of delivery, make sure they get it so the accountspayable person does not have to track it down. Some business owners feel they don't have the extra time to send invoices to five different departments, or follow up on proof of deliveries. However, if they calculated all the time and money they spend on delinquent delinquent 1) adj. not paid in full amount or on time. 2) n. short for an underage violator of the law as in juvenile delinquent. DELINQUENT, civil law. He who has been guilty of some crime, offence or failure of duty. accounts -- contacting the accounts payable person week after week, collecting missing information -- they would probably find it's worth taking the time to expeditethat will result in expedited payments, especially when considering large receivables. Write down the name of every person with whom you speak and ask them to spell it for you. Once employees know you have their name, they tend to pay more attention to your receivable because they know whatever promises are made can be traced back to them. Another suggestion is to take the person in charge of paying to lunch and asking what you can do to speed the payment process. Keep in mind that very few people ask accounts payable people their opinion on anything, so they are usually flattered that you consider them important enough to seek their advice. The reality is their opinion is actually very important because they are in a position to tell you how to expedite ex·pe·dite tr.v. ex·pe·dit·ed, ex·pe·dit·ing, ex·pe·dites 1. To speed up the progress of; accelerate. 2. payment. Explain that your company has a new accounts receivable accounts receivable n. the amounts of money due or owed to a business or professional by customers or clients. Generally, accounts receivable refers to the total amount due and is considered in calculating the value of a business or the business' problems in paying system in place and they are really coming down hard on you to get customers up to speed on paying invoices in a timely way. Put yourself in a position of enlisting their help, as opposed to just calling and asking them to start paying on time (which will not work). Carol Frischer is a member of Holthouse Carlin car·line or car·lin n. Scots A woman, especially an old one. [Middle English kerling, from Old Norse, from karl, man.] & Van Trigt in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. and author of "Collections Made Easy." She can be reached at carolf@hcvt.com. Entrepreneur's Notebook is a regular column contributed by EC2, The Annenberg Incubator incubator, apparatus for the maintenance of controlled conditions in which eggs can be hatched artificially. Incubator houses with double walls of mud, a fireroom, and several compartments each holding about 6,000 hens' eggs were developed in ancient times; the Project, a center for multimedia and electronic communications at the University of Southern California The U.S. News & World Report ranked USC 27th among all universities in the United States in its 2008 ranking of "America's Best Colleges", also designating it as one of the "most selective universities" for admitting 8,634 of the almost 34,000 who applied for freshman admission . Contact James Klein at (213) 743-1759 with feedback and topic suggestions. |
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