Credit Control is a means of monitoring and actioning any unpaid debts or bills on a consumer account. Credit Control is set up within procedures that you can set up specific paths for your Credit Control process to follow. Each procedure will then consist of the various stages, and actions added to each stage. This may be in the form of a letter, email or other form of correspondence.
Whenever a statement is generated that results in a negative balance, or a negative opening balance is added to an account, it will trigger the Credit Control process. If an account has an outstanding balance, then a Debt Info will be created on the account. The Credit Control process runs every day in the early hours of the morning and will automatically generate correspondence at this time.
On Hold accounts, or accounts with an active Direct Debit, will not automatically generate credit control correspondence. However, their debt will still be tracked for reporting purposes, and flags will still be added to an account to be viewed via Mabdeck.
An account in Credit Control can have multiple debts. For example, if a second statement is generated for an account, and an outstanding balance increased, then the account will show as having a debt for the first statement and a debt for the second
Adding Credit Control Procedures
Credit Control Procedures allow for multiple paths for accounts to go through Credit control, with each Procedure having a different set of stages and actions. The options
Credit Control Procedures are set up at client level in Mabdeck. Procedures cannot overlap with their setup in order to avoid confusion over what procedure a debt should follow.
To set up a procedure click the Finance tab on the left of the screen, then click on Credit Control Setup. You can select your client, and then click add to open the Add a Procedure form.
From here, you can add what restrictions you want this procedure to have, stating what scenarios an account will follow this path when in Credit Control.
1. Credit Control Path
You can set the Credit Control Path, which indicates which debts on an account will follow this path. This can be all debts generated on an account, only the first debt generated against an account for more lenient credit control actions, ongoing debts should you want to have more consistent actions for any debt following the leniency of the first debt, and disabling the procedure should it no longer be in use.
2. Minimum Debt Level
You can also set the minimum debt level required for the credit control process to take affect. This will be an accumulation of all outstanding debt on an account so, should an account have a single debt that is below the threshold, should a new debt get added that brings it above that amount, they will then start following the Credit Control Procedure.
3. Auto-Publish Credit Control
You can choose for credit control to auto-publish. More detail on this can be found here.
4. Auto-Publish Credit Control
Lastly, you can choose to disable owner actions on the Procedure in cases where a tenant account is active at multiple properties, but there are different owners for these properties. This will restrict owners being contacted unnecessarily, and will only affect Owner Actions. Excluding this scenario, all other owner actions will generate as expected.
Adding Credit Control Stages
Credit Control Stages are set up within a procedure. You can add as many stages as you need to, for when a payment is due or overdue, based on the payment terms you have chosen at the point of client setup.
From the Credit Control Setup Page, click Show Stages and then Add a Stage. This will open the Add a Stage form.
Choose a Stage Name, then select whether this stage will generate an action when a statement is due or overdue. You may want to add a reminder action which will generate a number of days before the statement balance is due, to remind the resident to make a payment.
Enter the number of days that the payment will be due in, or overdue by when the Credit Control stage is activated, then click Add to save the stage to Mabdeck.
You can add as many stages as needed to the Credit Control procedure. To make changes to a stage, click Edit on the stage you would like to update.
Adding Credit Control actions
Actions are added to stages and can be in the form of a phone call, letter, email or flag on the customer’s account. You can add multiple actions to a stage of Credit Control, and will generate in a pre-defined order depending on what information is available on the customer's account. You can take a look at the order of the actions below! Actions are a form of notifying the customer that their payment is due or overdue, and by how many days. You can also choose whether the action is applied to the owner or tenant account.
Click the Add an Action button on the stage you would like to add an action to.
Select the action you would like to add. You can add multiple actions to each stage of Credit Control.
Select whether you would like to generate the action against the Owner or the Tenant account, complete any further required fields, then click Add to save the action to the stage. More information regarding each action type and how they work can be found on our help article here.
Credit Control Actions Order
Credit Control Actions will generate in a specific order, depending on what information is available on the resident's account. If an action fails due to missing information, the next action will be attempted. If an action is successful, no further actions will take place for that account, at that stage.
1. Phone Action
The phone action will be attempted in the first instance. If there is a mobile or landline number on the resident's account on Mabdeck, this action will be considered successful. No further actions will take place for that stage of Credit Control on the account, even if they have been set up.
2. Email Action
The email action will be attempted if a phone action which has been set up fails, or if there is no phone action set up to take place too. If there is an email address on the resident's account on Mabdeck, this action will be completed successfully. No further actions for that stage of Credit Control will take place on the account, even if they have been set up.
3. Letter Action
The letter action will be attempted if both the phone action and email actions fail, or if there are no other actions set up to take place too. This stage does not depend on any information on the resident's account.
4. Flag Action
The flag action is independent of any other actions which have been added to the stage of Credit Control, and an account will be flagged alongside any other actions which have been added to the stage.