Accounting Software: Tracking Past Due Bills Made Easy

Eliminate Past Due Fees

You’ve taken a look at several ways accounting software can help you better control your business.

You’ve determined that, whatever package you choose, you need the ability to create monthly reports, create customer statements, keep track of accounts payable aging, and send out electronic invoices.

At the same time, there are still other concerns to take into consideration before choosing the right software. While the accounts payable aging documents and monthly reports can be helpful, they are not enough. They are printed on a schedule rather than on an “as needed” basis, meaning that there are times when they may come too late. You need a software package that has a simple means of tracking accounts automatically to alert you of past due bills.

When you have bills that are not paid on time, you are automatically susceptible to late charges, account suspension, and even loss of utility services. Tracking accounts to assure you don’t reach this point can be difficult without some sort of automated process.

Accounts payable aging processes will help you take note of any invoices that are outstanding, with the oldest at the top of the list. However, tracking accounts in this manner doesn’t establish any results regarding utility and other bills. Monthly reports can give you information on outstanding and late bills, but because these are only printed once a month, by the time you analyze these, the bills may be past due and already incurred late fees or other consequences.

By tracking accounts electronically with automated alerts, you can save time and money.  Checking the due dates of bills daily can become a time-consuming process, especially as your business grows and you take on more and more vendors and have to keep track of more invoices and utility bills. It can also be costly to employ someone for tracking accounts in this manner. However, if you choose the right software package, tracking accounts will be easy and save both time and money.

By entering the due date of the invoice or bill, followed by setting up reminders through the system, you can receive alerts prior to the bills being late. Typically, you will want to receive an alert with a week’s notice, followed by a second alert on the due date if the bill has not yet been paid. When payment has been made, you can enter the date the payment was sent, and the alert will be turned off.

This allows tracking accounts individually, so you don’t have to read through a huge report and find the accounts that are in danger of costing you a great deal of money because they are due. Because the process is automated, there is no effort involved in any form of tracking accounts, including the alerts, monthly reports, or accounts payable aging reports. Your software package can be set up to do it all with no input, simply sending you an alert when any of these processes are scheduled to occur.