Keep a customer stop in place, and lift it when the money arrives
Steps 4 and 5 of stopping supply to a customer who is not paying: keep the stop you set from being wiped out, and lift it cleanly when the money arrives. It follows Steps 2 and 3, where you closed the gaps the stop does not cover and told the people who will meet it.
The running example is GadgetSphere Distribution (GSD)’s stop on a systems integrator who owes RM 64,800, set under Credit Term Status because the reason is lateness, with a RM 18,900 draft order waiting at GSD. Before you lift a stop, decide whether the customer comes back on the same terms (the end of Step 5).
Step 4: Protect the stop from being wiped out
The outcome: the stop you set is still there next month.
BigLedger has a background job called Blacklist Overdue Customer. The job ships with the product, but it is not one of the clocks a new tenant is given, so it does not run unless somebody gives it one in the Scheduler or runs it by hand, and nothing in the product does either for you. When it does run, it:
- Removes every blacklist flag in the tenant, on both dropdowns, for every customer, including every flag a person set by hand.
- Re-flags (on Credit Limit Status only) any customer whose balance in any one company is above their credit limit for that company: a limit set for that company on the customer’s company tab, otherwise their default limit.
It almost never re-flags anybody for lateness. The part meant to do that looks for the customer’s default payment terms in the wrong place and finds none; it only finds terms set for one company on the customer’s company tab, and even then it flags Credit Limit Status, not Credit Term Status. So after a run, a customer you stopped for lateness under Credit Term Status is back to trading, and nothing tells you.
What to do about it:
- Ask your administrator whether the job is scheduled, and who runs it by hand. The answer is almost always nobody. Ask for that to stay true unless credit control agrees otherwise, and make sure anyone who runs it tells you first.
- Keep your own list of every customer you put on stop: date, reason, amount, who agreed. This is the credit controller’s stop list, and it existed long before software did. It is also how you check the stops survived: once a month, open each customer on the list and confirm the dropdown still says
BLACKLISTED. - If the job is run, re-apply every stop on your list the same day.
Step 5: Lift the stop when the money arrives
The outcome: the customer can trade again, and the documents that were waiting move.
Master Data > Customer Maintenance > (the customer) > Main
Set the dropdown back to OK, clear or rewrite the alert message, save, and take the customer off your stop list with the date and the reason.
Nothing is waiting to happen by itself. The stop never queued anything. It refused FINAL and left the document where it was. So:
- The RM 18,900 draft order is still a draft. Somebody must open it, check that the prices and stock are still right, and press FINAL. The order still carries the customer details copied when it was keyed, so check the terms on it too if you changed them while the customer was on stop.
- A bill a till kept in its offline queue goes through the next time the till syncs, without anybody pressing anything. That one is the exception, because it was a sale that had already happened.
- If you deactivated their credit limit for the online store, re-activate it.
- Anything that was refused while the customer was on stop and then deleted is gone. It has to be raised again.
- Nobody is told the stop has been lifted. Send the same people a one-line note.
Before you lift a stop, decide whether the customer comes back on the same terms. A customer who needed a stop once is a candidate for a lower limit or shorter terms. See Deciding on Credit.
What success looks like for this part
The customer is on your stop list with a date, a reason and the name of whoever agreed; you know whether the Blacklist Overdue Customer job is scheduled and who runs it by hand; and once a month each customer on the list still reads BLACKLISTED. When you lift a stop, the dropdown reads OK, the customer is off your list with the date and the reason, and every draft that was waiting has been checked and finalised by a person. When you are done, run the whole task’s success check.
Common mistakes in this part
The two that belong to these steps, running Blacklist Overdue Customer to “refresh” the stops, and lifting the stop and expecting orders to flow, are with the rest of the task’s mistakes under Common mistakes on the first page.
Related documentation
- Chasing Overdue Accounts — the collections run that tells you who is a candidate for a stop
- Credit Limits and Payment Terms — the limits and terms, and the sweep job in full
- Customer Maintenance — the two status dropdowns, the alert message and the customer status