Many of our customers use our platform MA!N for credit management and collections. An important functionality for them is the payment plan. That sounds like a simple function, but over the years we have implemented different variants of it. Let’s dive into the most frequently used features.
Entering a payment plan
A payment plan usually consists of an amount to be paid per month or per week. What you see less often are different installment amounts. An example: in The Netherlands many people receive a holiday pay in May and this increases their budget for that month. How do you act to this? You agree a higher installment for May and record this in MA!N. MA!N automates the rest.
Supporting the customer
When recording a payment plan, MA!N can send a confirmation of the plan to the customer. With longer-term schemes you want to support the customer in complying with the payment plan. A few examples to do this:
- Send a notification before the term expires, perhaps together with a payment request.
- Send an SMS as a reminder based on customer behavior. In the latter case, for example, you only send an SMS if the customer has paid one or more installments late before.
Checking the payment plan
Does the customer pay ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – checking the payment plan is that easy. But the situation changes if you have many payment plans. After all, you want to prevent MA!N from creating unnecessary actions for not meeting the plan. You avoid unnecessary actions by adding a margin for:
The installment amount
If someone has to pay €100, but only pays €99, the installment will still be marked as fulfilled. This way you avoid small payment differences.
The check date
If you have agreed that August 22 is the deadline for a payment, it is possible that the customer will not transfer the money until August 22. Furthermore, it can be that payments are not processed in the financial system in a timely manner. For these kinds of situations, you set a grey period of a few days. MA!N still uses August 22 as the payment date for the customer, but only creates an action if the payment is not visible after a few days.
Adding new invoices
New claims may arise during the term of a payment plan. That can be a reason for terminating the payment plan. But perhaps you might want the new claim to be added to the payment plan. MA!N supports various options for this, both manual and automated.
More options
When the payment plan nears its end, MA!N can send the customer a message. You can use this for thanking customers for fulfilling the plan and telling them the amount of the final installment.
Good to know: MA!N offers even more options. Do you want us to catch up with you? [Send us an e-mail], and we will contact you for discussing the requirements and options. Or read more about what credit management software offers.
With MA!N you ensure that the payment arrangement works for your organization.