Accelerate Collections
Better Customer Communications about Invoices and Payments
Dunning is one of the highest leverage parts of accounts receivable and usually the least attended to. Most teams switch on the default templates, set reminders at 7, 14, and 30 days, and then live with the side effects: notices going to a hundred contacts who never asked for an invoice, reminders landing on accounts that already sent a wire, and a suspension warning hitting a customer in the middle of a renewal conversation.
Watch the Replay Now
25 Minutes with Product Demonstrations
- Contacts – Most dunning communications are limited to the accounts payable team and the primary business sponsor. Learn how to progressively expand the range and number of contacts as aging increases.
- Formats – Learn why text messages outperform HTML in many cases. Text messages are less likely to land in the spam folder or be blocked by security gateways.
- Sender – Dunning communications from an individual person rather than a generic corporate inbox perform the best. Real people’s names stand out and increase reply rate.
- Consolidated Messages – For customers with multiple open invoices, send a single consolidated email with a list of the outstanding bills and a total account balance to increase the probability of a full payment.
- Statements – Send out quarterly statements that summarize all invoices and payments over the past 90 days. Statements help AP and business sponsors to understand transaction activity.
- Portal – Offer customers self-service access to a billing portal where they can see their account balance, view invoice history, and make payments online without having to reach out to your accounts receivable team.
Dunning Best Practices
Faster Responses
To Dunning Emails
Sometimes, the best way to get a response to a dunning email is to take the opposite approach of what you would normally do. Instead of sending a highly formatted email from a generic corporate address, you may get a faster response by sending a plain-text message from your own personal address.
Top Mistakes with Dunning
And How to Avoid Them
Dunning is complicated. If you are not careful, you can end up sending a lot of messages to the wrong people at the wrong times. Dunning emails get activated in the billing system, and the whole process goes into auto-pilot mode with no human in the loop. If something goes wrong, your finance team won’t be aware until a customer calls to complain.
Nine Ways to Optimize
Dunning Communications
Billing systems typically have a default set of email templates that you can activate with a few mouse clicks. These turnkey processes are a good starting point but are not necessarily optimized for your business. It is worth investing time in configuring for the unique aspects of your collection processes and communications style.
About the Presenters
Max Rosenberg
Vice President of Client Services
As Vice President of Client Services, Max Rosenberg oversees all new implementations as well as the customer success and professional services teams. His team works closely with finance directors, controllers, and revenue operations professionals at hundreds of SaaS and cloud companies to optimize their subscription billing, revenue recognition, accounts receivable, and investor metrics reporting.
