> Y'know, just to put a different perspective on things, we used to have an
>accountant do our billing, not Emerald. He did exactly what you describe, if
>someone didn't pay, they just got a new bill for twice the amount, and
>service continued as normal.
> The problem, of course, was that some people never paid, and their invoice
>just got larger and larger. We changed to Emerald billing in April of last
>year and we are STILL trying to collect from MOST of those "balance-forward"
>customers.
The problem isn't with credit card customers -- its with customers WITHOUT
credit cards.... Trouble flag right there! I don't MIND carrying
someone ONE month. It's good business. Things happen, mail gets lost,
and you get good referrals that way. I'm certainly not going to let it age
that far -- I just wrote off our two December non-pays today.
No, the problem is definitely in the lack of this feature, REGARDLESS of
whether you'll carry a customer 30 or 60 days. Scenario:
Joe User has no credit card. He signs up with you, using Emerald 2.2, on
2/18, and pre-pays that first month. You IMMMEDIATELY create and invoice
for 2/18 to 3/18, and mark it paid. You run billing on Mondays, and for
pre-payments, you go 30 days in advance. So on Monday, 2/24, you do a
batch run that creates his NEXT invoice, for 3/18 to 4/18, which is DUE on
3/18. This user habitually pays at the last minute, so you can EXPECT him
to be knocking on your door the morning of March 17th with a check in
hand.... and NOT A MOMENT BEFORE THAT. So on Monday, 3/17, you run a
billing batch, and it doesn't create his invoice -- he hasn't paid the last
one yet! He pays on Tuesday, and you mark it thusly. He paid ON TIME,
and there should be no problem, right? WRONG! Next time you do a billing
run, Monday, March 24th, it will STILL not generate an invoice for him!
Yes, he paid his last one, but when you tell it on the 24th of March to
generate invoices from that day through April 24th, it will SKIP HIM. Bad
karma.
The ONLY solution I've found to this is to insist that paper invoice
customers go quarterly only.
> All I'm saying is be careful what you wish for.
Fine enough.... I don't want to carry someone FOREVER, but I would like to
be a bit more generous than just cutting someone off at zero hour,
especially when customers tend to wait until they ARE cut off to pay the bill!