Accounts receivable management and collection in Uniconta

Everything starts with the sales invoice. It carries the payment term you agreed with the customer and, if you offer one, a discount for paying early. A wholesaler with regular buyers usually has a handful of standard arrangements, while a service firm often agrees terms job by job. How consistently these terms are recorded decides how much chasing you have to do later. Companies that prefer to send invoices electronically also look at e-invoicing, so that the invoice lands directly in the customer's system.

Then the money arrives. Each payment has to be matched to the right invoice, which is called payment matching. A customer may pay two invoices at once, pay only part of one, or have a credit note that needs to be netted off first. Until that is right, the list of open items cannot be trusted.

Whatever is still open after the due date follows a fixed path. A friendly reminder comes first, then a formal demand for payment, and for stubborn cases a phone call or a credit check before you deliver again. Companies with repeat customers often prefer direct debit, where the customer gives permission in advance and you collect the amount yourself. That reduces arrears, but it needs a well kept mandate and attention to debits that the bank returns.

The awkward cases belong in the process as well. A customer who disputes the delivery, a credit note that still has to be issued, a customer in talks about a payment arrangement. Such files are deliberately kept out of the standard reminders, otherwise a satisfied customer receives a demand while you are still in discussion. In a small team it helps when one person owns the list of open items and everybody knows who that is.

Finally, the owner or finance lead reviews the age of the open items on a regular basis. The longer an invoice stays unpaid, the smaller the chance it is ever paid in full. That review belongs in the weekly routine rather than being left to the month-end close.

Uniconta is cloud-based ERP and accounting software. For debtors it sends automatic payment reminders and demands for payment in the currency of the customer, and it keeps track of which reminder code a customer received before. Credit control also appears in the debtor module. Payment terms can be recorded for both debtors and creditors, including a cash discount for early payment.

For direct debit, Uniconta supports SEPA Core and SEPA B2B. You register mandates in Uniconta, the software produces the collection files for the bank, and returned debits can be processed. A SEPA debit needs a mandate, the customer needs an IBAN, and the customer has to be notified before the collection. The bank connection reads transactions throughout the day and reconciles them automatically with the ledger.

Two things we deliberately do not present as features, because we have not confirmed them. We do not describe interest on overdue invoices as part of Uniconta, and we do not claim that a failed direct debit triggers a reminder by itself. If you want either in your routine, we agree beforehand how you will handle it.