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Quantum VS Help: Credit Control And Reviews |
A Credit Review is a routine, like a simple computer program, which can be set up to deal with repetitive Credit Control procedures, such as:
sending bulk letter mailings; e.g. to customers whose account payments are overdue;
telephoning customers; e.g. to establish when payments are due to be made; and
updating customer account status.
Instead of dealing with each customer account separately, these procedures can be dealt with in bulk by running an appropriate Credit Review.
To see some simple examples of Credit Review Rulesets you may wish to create and customise, see Simple Credit Review Ruleset Examples.
A Credit Review is essentially a routine known as a Credit Review Ruleset, comprising the following elements:
Actions: An Action is an instruction within the Ruleset to carry out a particular task. Actions not applied within a Rule (see below) are applied to all customer accounts. For example, if you insert the Action 'Change Status To' within a Credit Review Ruleset, all accounts will be updated to a pre-defined Status.
Rules: A Rule is essentially an instruction to carry out an Action (see above) based on whether a customer account does or does not meet certain 'check' criteria. For example, you might 'check' customer accounts whose Account Balance is greater than 80% of their Credit Limit, and then apply a 'True Action' - an Action applied to accounts which meet this criteria, and/or a 'False Action' - an Action applied to accounts which do not meet this criteria.
Credit Review Rulesets are typically very simple, comprising just one or two Rules or Actions, but you have the potential to create more complex Rulesets to suit your operations. The following Ruleset elements are not obligatory, but are useful when creating more complex Rulesets:
Comments: A Comment is simply a line of text which can be added to the Ruleset as a note explaining the purpose of the following Rules and/or Sections in a Ruleset.
Sections: A Section is essentially a sub-routine of the main Ruleset. In other words, you may group a set of Rules, Actions and/or comments into a Section. This helps to rationalise the Ruleset and can make it easier to edit/update Rulesets in the future.
See Creating A Credit Review Ruleset.
The key Actions which can be applied are:
Change Status To: Change the account status of customers to a pre-defined Status.
Telephone: Telephone customers.
Send Letter: Send a personalised letter to customers generated from a PDF or 'mailmerge' template document.
There are further Actions available which relate to the operation of Rules and Sections within a Ruleset. For a full list of Actions and what they are used for see the List Of Available Credit Review Actions.
To set up a new Credit Review you will need to:
1. Plan your Credit Review Ruleset. A Credit Review Ruleset can potentially be extremely simple or extremely complex, depending on the number of rules and actions that are included. A new Ruleset should be planned out on paper first using flow diagrams, and then tested thoroughly before being carried out for real.
2. Create and define your Credit Control letter(s). If the Credit Review will include the action 'Send Letter' you will need to create one or more letter templates for use in certain circumstances (e.g. informing a customer that their account payments are overdue). You may use PDF templates or create Mail Merge templates in Word. See Defining Credit Review Letters.
3. Create the new Credit Review Ruleset. This involves:
Defining Actions and/or Rules for the Ruleset - plus Comments and Sections if required; then
Saving the new Ruleset.
See Creating A Credit Review Ruleset.
4. Test run the Credit Review. It is vital that each time you create a new Credit Review, or edit an existing one, you test that Credit Review and the Credit Review Actions it contains, to ensure that the desired results are produced.
5. Run the Credit Review. You may now run the saved Credit Review 'for real' whenever necessary. See below.
Once a Credit Review Ruleset has been created, you can run it by:
selecting and opening the required Credit Review from the Finder; and then
clicking Start Credit Review.
When the Credit Review has finished running you will need to:
Review Actions; i.e. check the list of accounts against which Actions (i.e. Change Status To/Telephone/Send Letter) have been flagged; then
Submit Actions; i.e. instruct the system to change the Status of / print a telephone list of / print letters for the specified accounts.
Complete the Credit Review; i.e. mark the Credit Review as complete when you have finished submitting Actions.
No. When you run a Credit Review (see Running A Credit Review), a list of qualifying customers for an Action (i.e. Status Change, Telephone, Send Letter) is produced. See Reviewing Credit Review Actions.
You may then review the customer list and select (or deselect) customers against whom you wish to submit the Action. You may easily select all, none or selected individual customers. When you then Submit Actions, only the selected customers will be included/updated in the Credit Review. See Submitting Credit Review Actions.
You also have the option to defer the submission of Actions for all or selected customers; that is, submit Actions for some customers now, then submit Actions for other customers later within the same Credit Review. See Deferring Credit Review Actions.
You may use the Finder to open a saved Credit Review Ruleset, either to run it or edit it. See Finding Credit Review Rulesets.
You may also use the Finder to retrieve Credit Review Actions on an open Credit Review if you have completed some - but not all - of the Actions. See Finding Credit Review Actions.
If you wish to use a Credit Review to issue bulk Credit Control letters to customers, you must first create the template document with the required wording. For example, you might create a letter to issue to customers whose account payments are overdue.
One option is to set up a PDF template document. Alternatively you may create a Mail Merge template document in Microsoft Word. This template document will then be saved to the shared server used by Quantum VS to make it available for use in Credit Reviews. The template document must be selected when defining a 'Send Letter' Action with a Credit Review Ruleset. See Defining Credit Review Letters.
Subsequently you will run the Credit Review so that you have a list of selected customers. On clicking Submit Actions, individual letters are automatically generated for each customer, populated with information from the Quantum VS Customer record. These letters can then be printed and/or emailed as necessary. See Running A Credit Review.
To see some simple examples of Credit Review Rulesets you may wish to create and customise, see Simple Credit Review Ruleset Examples.