Accounts receivable are essential for a business in its production and marketing activities, and it relates to the money that a company should collect from customers for the sale of its products, services, or the provision of services. This is not only the core link of enterprise capital management, but also the key factor to ensure the economic efficiency of enterprises and their sustainable and healthy development. Therefore, in order to avoid the uncontrolled growth of accounts receivable and reduce its impact on the company's liquidity, enterprises need to carefully handle the risks in business decisions and conduct appropriate legal risk assessment to ensure that the risk of accounts receivable is controlled within the range that the enterprise can bear. In this article, I will share some strategies for dealing with accounts receivable issues, hoping to provide some valuable reference and guidance for businesses.
1. Strengthen customer credit and risk management
The end of the year or the end of a fiscal year is often a time when companies are facing increased difficulties in accounts receivable**, in part because companies are overly optimistic about the financial situation and risk tolerance of customers, or worry that excessive debt collection will lead to the loss of long-term customers. However, the root cause of these problems lies in the failure of companies to conduct effective credit assessment and risk analysis of customers in advance.
Before establishing a cooperative relationship with a customer, the enterprise should use the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, Qichacha, China Judgment Network and other channels to obtain the customer's financial status, shareholding structure, legal proceedings and other information to assess the customer's credit status and the health of business operations. If necessary, a lawyer can also be hired to conduct in-depth due diligence to more accurately assess the client's ability to repay, the timing and likelihood of payment. For those customers who are at higher risk, businesses should take steps to reduce their receivables** risk, such as requiring immediate payments or minimizing the duration of accounts receivable.
2. Strengthen contract management and performance supervision
In order to avoid late payments from customers, enterprises must pay attention to the contract signing process when conducting transactions, which is the first step in controlling the risk of accounts receivable. When formulating a contract, several key parts should be specified in detail: the subject of the contract, the conditions of delivery, the quality of the product, the terms of payment, liability for breach of contract, application of law and guarantees. In particular, in the payment clause, it is very important to clarify the conditions and specific payment period of the lump sum payment, ensure that the payment date is specific to the year, month and day, avoid vague agreements, and clarify the liability for late payment (such as setting a daily interest rate of 5/10,000 liquidated damages), if possible, also include a guarantee clause, and try to ensure that the contract is subject to the jurisdiction of the court where the enterprise is located.
In addition, pay attention to the performance of the contract, track the procedures in the transaction process, strengthen the management of the performance process, and ensure that there is sufficient evidence to support: including but not limited to purchase contracts or sales contracts, delivery notes or receipt confirmations, payment certificates, VAT invoices, statements or settlement documents, e-mail exchanges, written communications, WeChat communication records, etc. When making statements or settlement documents, it is necessary to clearly list the information of both the receiving and paying parties, the payment deadline, the specific items and amounts of accounts receivable, and ensure that the person responsible for settlement has the corresponding identity and authorization, and signs the documents and affixes the official seal, financial seal or special seal. If it is difficult to affix a seal in practice, the method of reconciliation should be agreed in advance in the contract.
3. Improve the analysis and monitoring of accounts receivable
During the contract execution process, it is essential to track the progress of accounts receivable in real time and communicate effectively with customers on an ongoing basis. The finance department should check the status of accounts receivable on a regular or random basis to ensure that the sales process follows company policies, that bulk purchase contracts are being executed correctly, that invoices are complete and valid, and that relevant business and management personnel are complying with credit granting and approval processes. At the same time, the situation of the accounts should be reported to the relevant departments in a timely manner to ensure that the accounts receivable can be timely and completely.
In order to further reduce the risk of accounts receivable, the company can establish a high-risk customer credit list, and at the end of each quarter, organize relevant personnel to conduct a detailed analysis of the structure, aging, overdue status and customer repayment ability of accounts receivable. For those customers with poor credit status, they can limit the risk by reducing or canceling their credit limits, and provide timely advice or early warning to the business team, so as to minimize the risk caused by accounts receivable and ensure the best funds.
Fourth, the implementation of effective collection strategies of both soft and hard
When an enterprise perceives abnormal signs of a customer, such as a change in the company's equity, a change of legal representative, a large number of layoffs, salary arrears, an increase in lawsuits, a loss of contact personnel, etc., or the customer is indifferent to collection activities, the management and relevant departments should immediately increase vigilance, accelerate the pace of collection and adjust the customer's credit rating in a timely manner. According to the customer's risk level, the nature of the arrears, the reasons for the arrears and their willingness to repay, flexibly formulate a collection plan and take corresponding collection measures to prevent the accumulation of bad debts from increasing and eventually difficult to recover. Especially for large and long-term accounts receivable, it is necessary to take rapid and effective means of dunning, including e-mail, WeChat, SMS, reminder letters, etc., as well as direct door-to-door negotiation. In this process, it is important to pay attention to the collection and preservation of evidence.
The goal of debt collection is not to damage the business relationship with the customer, but to better develop both parties. In the face of deliberate default, the use of legal means to collect is a necessary measure to avoid losing the right to win the lawsuit. In the collection of accounts receivable, the lawyer's letter is an extremely effective tool, which can not only interrupt the statute of limitations, but also demonstrate the determination and attitude of the enterprise as a creditor to recover the money. Practice has proved that most debtors will take the initiative to contact the creditor after receiving the lawyer's letter to seek a grace period or immediate performance of the repayment obligation, or reach a repayment agreement.
For customers who are truly unable to repay their debts after they fall due for special reasons, enterprises should consider allowing repayment methods such as repayment in kind or providing term discounts, or require customers to submit a payment commitment or guarantee letter to encourage them to repay as soon as possible. This approach not only helps to increase the best rate of accounts receivable, but also strengthens customer trust in the business, which in turn fosters closer partnerships.
5. Legitimate strategies to transfer accounts receivable risk
In the face of the risk of accounts receivable that some enterprises are unwilling to bear, it is necessary to explore legal ways to transfer risks. With the help of the capital and information advantages of financial institutions or factoring companies, they can effectively participate in the management of accounts receivable and help enterprises diversify some risks. The following strategies are used for risk transfer:
1. Obtain a third-party guaranteeFor customers who are assessed as high-risk, the enterprise should communicate with them in a timely manner and request the legal representative, major shareholder or affiliated enterprise of the customer to provide guarantees. Such security may be a letter of guarantee provided by the guarantor, or a mortgage, pledge or lien on assets of equivalent value to bear joint and several liability. In this way, in the event of a dispute over payment in the future, the enterprise can recover from the guarantor.
2. Non-recourse sale:This is the practice of transferring ownership of accounts receivable to a financial institution (usually a commercial bank), which is responsible for collecting payments directly from customers and taking on the risk of bad debts. For example, an enterprise can sell its accounts receivable to a bank in the form of non-recourse, and the bank charges a certain percentage of the handling fee, and retains a certain percentage of the money as a reservation, and finally settles with the enterprise based on the actual bad debt loss. If the debtor eventually defaults or is unable to repay, the commercial bank will not have the right to hold the enterprise to bear additional liability.
3. Commercial factoring business:An enterprise (creditor) may enter into a commercial factoring contract with a factoring company to transfer existing or future accounts receivable arising from a contract signed with the debtor for the sale of goods, provision of services, leasing of assets, etc. Factoring companies provide one or more services, including financing, sales account management, accounts receivable collection, credit investigation and evaluation, credit risk control and bad debt protection. In short, the enterprise conditionally transfers the accounts receivable claims to a company specializing in such business, and applies to it for accounts receivable collection, financing and other services as needed, so as to activate the accounts receivable and alleviate the financial pressure.
6. Adopt legal means to ensure that accounts receivable claims are realized
In order to ensure the smooth flow of the payment claim, it is recommended that the enterprise entrust a professional lawyer to initiate legal proceedings. Based on our experience in handling many similar cases, we can initiate litigation and file a request for property preservation with the court in a timely manner, such as freezing the client's assets, including the debtor in the list of dishonest executors, restricting the high-spending behavior of its legal representative, or listing shareholders and affiliates as co-defendants if necessary, these measures can effectively avoid the risk of not being able to claim the right debt due to the lack of enforceable property even after winning the lawsuit. In the case of sales of services or special products, we also recommend that the entrusting party conduct a return visit record or satisfaction survey on the debtor's use, so as to strengthen the evidence that there is no quality problem with the delivered product or service.
7. Hire legal counsel in advance to prevent potential risks
For many enterprises, it is often when they encounter disputes or unfavorable situations that they think of hiring a lawyer to intervene, and the role of the lawyer is more to carry out post-event remedial measures to minimize the losses that have occurred. However, in the long run, having a permanent legal counsel is undoubtedly an efficient legal support for businesses. Perennial legal counsel can rely on their professional knowledge to provide timely and proactive legal protection measures for enterprises, build a set of targeted and forward-looking legal security protection system, and realize the prevention and control of risks. This cooperation model can help enterprises efficiently solve specific legal issues and ensure compliance operations, so as to avoid disputes and losses.
8. Conclusion
As a key part of enterprise assets, the daily management of accounts receivable is extremely important for the sustainable and healthy growth of enterprises. Enterprises need to enhance their vigilance on accounts receivable risk management, and implement a set of comprehensive and efficient regulatory measures to achieve a combination of pre-prevention, in-process control and post-processing, so as to reduce the risk of accounts receivable and ensure that the interests of enterprises are protected. This includes building a complete accounts receivable management system, conducting customer credit investigation and risk assessment before business development, strengthening the terms of the contract on the guarantee of accounts receivable execution, implementing continuous monitoring of accounts receivable, issuing early warnings in a timely manner and collecting evidence. For overdue accounts receivable, it is necessary to strengthen collection measures and take legal measures to solve malicious arrears.