**Top 5 Credit Control Tips**

Cash is the lifeblood of every business. It is vital that your business has an effective and robust credit control process in place. Here are our 5 top tips for credit control

Maintain good relationships

Invoicing promptly and accurately

Agree realistic terms

Make it as easy as possible

Know your customers

1. Maintain good relationships

By staying on good terms with your clients and customers, they are more likely to prioritise your business for payment because they will want to keep the option open to do business with you again in the future.

Next time they pay an invoice why not thank them for doing so.

2.Invoicing promptly and accurately

Ensure the invoice matches that of the goods or service provided. Send the invoice immediately to the right person and also those responsible for making the payment. Ensure payment terms and payment details are clearly shown

3. Agree realistic terms

Understand your clients internal processes, be realistic and work with these. No one want to pay invoices too quickly, so a realistic credit period is welcome. If your client see you are thinking of their business and their process they are much more likely to do more business with you and pay to these agreed terms.

4. Make it as easy as possible

Accept online payments, or set up direct debit collection (very cheap and easy using gocardless)

Can you afford to offer early settlement discounts? This promotes your clients paying your bills sooner.

If the client is finding it hard to pay – work with them by accepting smaller on account payments.

5. Know your customers

One of the most important factors is knowing that your customers are credit worthy – at TFMC(Southend) we use creditsafe.co.uk to perform our credit checks.

Remember you do not have to give credit and in some instances the right thing to do is raise a pro-forma for the work to be done and only start the work once payment has been received.

Thanks all for the taking the time to read these tips. if you would like to know more about implementing a robust credit control process, or even help collecting your outstanding invoices please feel free to contact us at The Financial Management Company (Southend)

Martin Beckenham
Martin Beckenham

Martin Beckenham runs The Financial Management Centre in Ashford & Maidstone and serves as the head bookkeeper in Ashford and Maidstone. Martin is a Certified Bookkeeper with the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers. He has over 35 years of experience in the Finance and Administration sector, firstly in the Oil Industry and more recently as Head of Statutory Government body.