When a client has an outstanding balance owed and is not paying, you may choose to send their balance to a collections agency. This article will provide the steps to setup and maintain balances sent to a collections agency.
Initial Setup
Create New Payer
- Go to the Payers module.
- Click Add.
- Select the Payer Type: Generic (SPRNT).
- Enter the Payer Name as Collections Agency.
- Go to the Payer Rules tab.
- Change Skip Group Number Check and Skip Individual policy Id Check to Yes.
- Click Save.
Create Custom Write-off
- Go to the Settings module > Billing Tab.
- Scroll to the Accounting section and locate the drop-down menu for Number of custom writeoff fields to use:
- Select the number of custom writeoffs needed.
- If you already have custom write-offs setup, select the next number in the sequence.
- A blank Writeoff Field will appear at the bottom, enter in the custom writeoff name in both the Name and Plural fields.
- We recommend naming it either Collection Agency or Sent to Collections.
- The spelling should be the same in both fields, you shouldn't add an 's' or 'es' to the name in the Plural field.
- Click Change.
Send Balance to Collections Agency
Assign Collections Payer to Client
- Go to the Clients module > Payers tab.
- Click Add at the top.
- Select the Collections Agency payer from the window that appears.
- Click Save.
Move Client Balance to Collections
- Go to the Payments module and locate the client.
- Find the DOS with the client balance that will be sent to the collections agency.
- Click new on the bill line.
- Select Create new payment.
- In the New Payment window enter a Reference and set Amount to 0.00.
- Select the transaction type to the custom write-off created above.
- Enter the amount being sent to the collections agency. This should be the full balance.
- Click Save.
- Queue the DOS to the Collections Agency payer.
- Go to the Billing module > Add window.
- Select the Collections Agency payer and create an invoice.
Applying Payments & Tracking Balances
When you collect funds from the collections agency for balances owed: enter the payment under the Collections Agency payer and apply to the Collections Payer bill line for the client and DOS in the Payments module.
- You can review the amounts that have been sent to a collections agency in the Accounting module > Trial Balance report under the transaction type column created for collections.
- You can review the amount outstanding with a collections agency in the Collections module under the specific Collections Agency payer that was created.