(fun upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Dunning and collections is vital
to any company's cash flow and customer experience.
With the free application package from Salesforce Billing
available on the AppExchange,
you can manage dunning and collections activities
all from one place,
making the entire process more productive and efficient.
Let's take a look.
Before we begin,
it's important to understand a few key terms.
Collections is when a company tries to collect money
that customers owe for past-due invoices.
Dunning is communication with customers
with the goal of collection.
Together, dunning and collections turns accounts receivables
into cold hard cash.
With the dunning and collections application package,
collections agents will have everything they need
to maximize efficiency and effectiveness.
The collections plan provides a detailed summary
for each account showing when the collections plan started,
how long it's been open, your customer contact,
and all related invoices from the past, present, and future.
You can even set up multiple dunning methods
and assign them to different accounts.
This way, you'll maintain positive customer relationships
by communicating in a way that best suits each customer.
For example, for customers with little credit history,
you can set up a proactive cadence,
which gives them early notification
of their upcoming invoices to help mitigate
the risk of non-collections and delayed payments.
Here are four steps to set up dunning and collections
with Salesforce Billing.
First, download the free dunning and collections app
from the AppExchange
and set up your account and invoice layouts.
From setup, find the objects manager
and select the account object
to edit your chosen page layouts.
Create a new section and move bill to contact,
collections agent,
collections plan date,
collections status,
and dunning method into this section.
Then drag in collections plans related list and save.
Repeat this process for the invoice object,
adding the hold collections field onto the page.
If this checkbox is selected on an invoice record,
it won't be included in a collections plan,
even if the account goes into collections.
Finish up by adding the collections plans related list
onto the page and save.
Next, create dunning methods and their related activities.
In the dunning methods tab,
click new and give your dunning method a name
and short description.
Next, create dunning activities that will be generated
for the collections agent
when an account enters collections.
We'll make our first activity an email
to be sent two days after the collections plan starts.
We'll name it first notice
and select email as the activity subject.
Let's also set the offset days to two.
For a more proactive approach,
give the offset days a negative value.
Negative two will send out the first notice
two days before the invoice is due.
Create as many activities as needed for each touchpoint
you'd like to make with the customer.
Customize your approach
by creating different dunning methods
for each type of customer
such as a more forgiving method for VIP customers,
only contacting them after the invoice is overdue
by one month.
Then configure the collections sections
for a chosen account.
Selecting the dunning method we just made,
we'll set our bill to contact and pick a collections agent
who will carry out dunning activities
if the account goes into collections.
When the account collection status
has changed to in collections,
a collections plan record will be generated
with tasks and activities based on the set dunning method.
Now that all your collections data is in one place,
you can generate insightful dashboards
and manage your cash proactively.
You can use the provided dunning and collections dashboard
to keep a close eye on your receivables,
identify at risk accounts, and monitor collection efforts.
Once you've gathered this data,
you can use it to reassess
the credit worthiness of customers
or to redefine company-wide credit policies,
helping minimize risk
while maximizing sales and cash collections.
With the free dunning and collections app
available from Salesforce Billing,
your teams can be more proactive
and help your company get cash faster.
To learn more,
visit Trailhead and earn the Salesforce Billing super badge.