It’s not the job of the debt collectors to do the accounting. So when I free up their time so they can focus on their job, they’re happy!
Vincent POUJADE, Administrative and Financial Director, NCA, talks about how CashOnTime Allocation software enabled his collections team to focus fully on their core business at the DIMO Software 2023 Forum. A workshop led by Pierre SANCHEZ, DIMO Software sales engineer.
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A multitude of document flows
The NCA Group (sales €25 million, €15 million for ATHOME SYNDIC and €10 million for CORTEX) specializes in managing incoming and outgoing flows for various companies, which involves generating a large number of documents. ATHOME’s customers are condominium managers, to whom various documents are sent in paper and electronic format, such as notices of AGMs, AGM minutes, calls for funds and work orders. The CORTEX business handles the same types of flows for large CAC 40 companies, notably banks, and processes pay slips, AGM notices and invoices. CashOnTime software has been implemented on the ATHOME side, which accounts for €20 million in postage invoice dispatches. It is not possible to margins on La Poste charges. ATHOME sends out the invoices and advances the stamps, which then have to be collected. La Poste is paid in cash, but customers are not paid in cash.
Vincent POUJADE explains: “Before the arrival of CashOnTime software, all lettering was done manually by the accounting department, involving 200,000 invoices a year, or around 1,000 payments a day. Some of this is done by direct debit, but this involved three full-time employees. The staff in my collections department only did customer accounting. I wanted them to be able to follow up on customer invoice payments and develop customer relations, rather than doing accounting lettering“.
CashOnTime software greatly optimizes accounting lettering
The IT department was involved in the search for solutions to improve accounting lettering, which was a very time-consuming job. She mentioned CashOnTime, and a POC was carried out. “On one day of lettering, without doing anything special, we achieved an automatic accounting lettering rate of 70%. So we chose this solution without any additional benchmark. We find it difficult to collect small invoices, such as stamp mailings. For example, we can have 200 invoices of the same amount, for different recipients when we send postage”, explains Vincent POUJADE.
When payments are received, it’s difficult to know which invoices need to be entered on the opposite side: “When a building manager – who doesn’t necessarily have an accountant on hand – convenes all his buildings or sends out different documents to all his buildings, he may invoice the same amount, but for different condominiums. We do an accounting by building to help our managing agents. We can have settlements for very small amounts that need to be reconciled on the right building. It’s a complex process. In the event of a lettering error on the wrong co-ownership or double claims, the customer is naturally dissatisfied. We often have simple settlements. Once we’ve identified the building, we know which invoice to face, and lettering is relatively straightforward. So we had to stop wasting time on lettering and automate this time-consuming process. I wanted the staff in the collections department – who are not accountants – to actually carry out collection tasks,” explains Vincent POUJADE.
“DIMO Software was put in touch with the integrator and the IT department. All this had to be coordinated, but the schedule was respected. As with the implementation of any management software, the start-up is sometimes a little complicated, but everything went rather smoothly. Today, the difficulties come more from the IS side, when there are problems with flow repositories, or depositing files on a server”.
The major benefit: ease of use and 100% lettering via the tool
ATHOME performs 100% of lettering via CashOnTime software. The tool performs automatic lettering, and all non-automatic lettering is done in the tool. Once the bank statements have been 100% reconciled, except for double settlements, all lettering – even manual lettering – is done in the tool. Then everything is transferred to the accounts. “It’s really easy to use the tool to go beyond automatic lettering. Of course, there’s just the difficulty of not being able to reconcile when you have a double payment. In this case, you have to go back into the accounts to indicate that it’s a double payment,” explains Vincent POUJADE.
From three almost full-time staff, there is now only one person who writes 2 hours a day: “In terms of volume and time saving, there’s no comparison. We’re also able to find entries easily. We have a whole battery of searches via the tool, which is much simpler than with the accounting tool. What’s more, we appreciate the responsiveness of the DIMO Software teams in the event of any problems. Given the volume of invoices and daily settlements, we can’t afford to have unfinished lettering at the end of the day. It’s hard to make up for three days of non-lettering,” says Vincent POUJADE.
The next step: increasing the rate of automatic accounting lettering
The automatic lettering rate is around 72%. It’s up to ATHOME to improve processes and routines: “Previously, I managed twelve banks for this activity. I’ve reduced it to four, and we have rules to prevent supplier invoice lettering errors. We need to open up the functionalities to increase the rate of automatic accounting lettering. This remains simple lettering.
More complex lettering will be done manually. The aim is to reach 85%. The few extra points will save a little time, but there will still be around 1 to 1.5 hours per day for complex lettering. This concerns, for example, a customer who pays several invoices with random rounding. In this case, the tool makes lettering proposals, as it learns as it goes along. It can detect that a particular company’s accountant operates in a particular way and, after a while, the tool makes proposals that can be validated or not, which considerably improves the lettering rate”.
Improving accounting lettering rates: a collaborative effort
According to Pierre SANCHEZ, improving the accounting lettering rate requires collaboration between DIMO Software and the customer’s accounting teams: “It’s a question of defining the level of risk, and at what level to place the cursor in order to go further and further in the accounting lettering rate, minimizing or even cancelling out the error rate on automatic lettering“. Vincent POUJADE adds: “In the beginning, we wanted to go too far with automation, and some of the lettering was off the mark. Deleting lettering afterwards is complicated, because it makes it harder to pinpoint problems. As a result, we narrowed down the spectrum to make sure that letterings were correct. Deleting the lettering to go back to manual is not a good solution”.
No resistance to change
“Debt collectors have to make calls. When I brought them the tool, it was a godsend! There’s no added value in lettering. The team was very keen to have software that could be implemented as quickly as possible to free up their time for more interesting tasks. As soon as the tool was installed, we achieved a lettering rate of 80%. Today, the daily lettering rate is around 70%. It’s not the job of the debt collectors to do the accounting. So when I free up their time so they can focus on their job, they’re happy!
Vincent POUJADE admits that he wanted to be cautious at first: “I wanted the tool to propose letterings that I could validate on a case-by-case basis. I did that for a day, but it was useless. Admittedly, some of the letterings were wrong, and often you don’t realize it until a few days later. Today, however, I have no worries whatsoever, and the lettering works just fine on its own. The implementation took around six weeks, including the time spent going back and forth with DIMO Software. In project mode for the team, it was quicker: I asked our integrator APOGEA to set up the reporting of all unlettered accounting entries in a format that could be integrated by DIMO Software. All this work, which was done on the side, had no impact whatsoever on the team. Then there was the training phase, getting to grips with the tool and the acceptance phase, but the project itself was fairly short once all this upstream work had been done.”
Why do customers (re)come to DIMO Software?
According to Pierre SANCHEZ, there are a number of factors that keep customers coming back to DIMO Software.
- The difficulty of recruiting accountants.
- Increasing invoice volumes. With internal or external growth, or the takeover of entities, the collections department can no longer handle lettering on its own, and needs to be equipped to enable the teams to do their real job.
- The importance of loyalty, customer relations and proximity.
- The product will continue to evolve, thanks to customer feedback, which is very helpful. We’re always on the lookout for new developments, so we can integrate them and make them available to all our customers.
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