Managing Credit Receivables and Collections provides information to the business credit community. It focuses on keeping credit and collection professionals up-to-date on the latest legal changes, technology and news affecting the profession. Additionally, it regularly surveys its subscribers as to the best ways they perform the credit and collection function. This information is disseminated in the newsletter. Each issue contains 5-7 articles, 6-10 short news clips, a profile on the back page and a calendar of upcoming seminars and conferences. An international supplement is included quarterly. Topics covered include: credit, collections, billing, accounts receivable, bankruptcy, legal issues, preferences, working with sales, making customer visits, salary and career information, DSO numbers, benchmarking data, credit scoring, technology, EDI and XML.
How often does your credit department update your company’s high-risk credit line accounts? MCRC asked readers that question for our new 2009 Credit & Collections Benchmarks & Analysis survey in order to help gauge how credit pros are reacting to the economic recession (it’s now official) that began in December 2007.
A credit executive looking to reduce credit risk in today’s uncertain economic environment may look to a credit enhancement to assist in making the sale on credit terms. A credit enhancement commonly considered by a vendor is a personal or corporate guarantee.
In today’s tumultuous economy, the stakes have never been higher when it comes to accurately assessing a potential (or current) customer’s creditworthiness. To survive, your company must not only sell but also get paid. Analyzing a customer’s creditworthiness, now more than ever, means carefully scrutinizing up-to-date (and, if possible, audited) financial statements to extract every last bit of valuable information from them in order to spot potential warning signs.
Conducting regular credit reviews of all active accounts, critical as it is in today’s volatile economy, can be an overwhelming challenge. A recent survey by the Credit Research Foundation (CRF) reveals that the average account base of survey respondents was 2,500. "To monitor 2,600 accounts per year, nearly 100 accounts would have to be reviewed on a daily basis—a daunting, if not impossible, task," notes Lyle Wallis, author of the new CRF report, Managing Receivables in the Midst of Today’s Economic Environment. (To order, visit www.crfonline.org).
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The Credit Research Foundation (CRF) 3rd Quarter 2008 National Summary of Domestic Trade Receivables (NSDTR) survey reveals a mixed, though fairly stable, picture, with DSO showing some deterioration but a slight improvement in percent current. The majority of credit pros responding to this survey are clearly successfully monitoring receivables to ensure cash flow despite the economic slowdown and rising delinquencies.
MCRC Survey: Most Utilized Benchmarks to Measure Credit Dept. Performance
CRF Paper Addresses Today’s Special Credit Challenges
"Strategies should be devised to anticipate and overcome the potential financial hazards that could become a by-product of the current economic state of affairs," notes author Lyle Wallis in Managing Receivables in the Midst of Today’s Economic Environment, a new paper published by the nonprofit Credit Research Foundation (CRF), of which she is vice president.
This issue continues our new “Ask the Expert” column. We invite readers to send in their credit questions and we’ll do our best to provide an expert response. Please submit questions to the editor at cdhorner@ioma.com. This column’s expert is Buddy Baker, export risks and financing consultant and author of User’s Handbook for Documentary Credits Under UCP 600 (an International Chamber of Commerce publication available at www.iccbooksusa.com). He can be reached at buddy.baker1@gmail.com; 847-830-3038.
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