Is your Financial Coordinator a strong analyzer who pays attention to financial detail? Is your Financial Coordinator a weak director who finds it difficult to collect past due accounts? Unfortunately, this is typically the situation, but this pearl can help you to reconcile this dilemma.
A typical Financial Coordinator is usually a task-oriented-person with a strong analyzer style, but a weak get-it-done director style. The strong analyzer style allows her to work on accounts, paying attention to every detail associated with the account. But a weak director style makes her indecisive and afraid to go after past due accounts. This is especially true if her relater style is also strong.
Being an ideal bookkeeper, being afraid to go after past due accounts is natural, but not necessary. There are a few things to keep in mind when trying to resolve past due accounts:
1) A past due account does not make the guarantor a bad person, just someone who needs help to catch up.
2) The bookkeeper is not doing the guarantor a favor by avoiding them the first month they are past due, they probably just forgot to pay and will appreciate the reminder.
3) If she let’s them get two or more months past due she is doing them a disservice. Every month makes their past due amount greater and more difficult for them to catch up.
4) When contacting them she should have a mind-set and attitude that she is there to help. Her first approach is to get them to pay the full amount due by a specific date. If they cannot pay the full amount she should make a new financial agreement that they and you can live with.
5) Most of all, she should look forward to contacting them so that their problem (and yours) can be resolved amicably.
If she finds it extremely distressing to go after past due accounts she should ask the doctor to allow her to work with a helper who can call the guarantor and resolve their accounts (someone with a stronger director style). The bookkeeper will still be in charge of the past due collections, but somebody else will be responsible for getting the guarantor's payments to her.
Going after past due accounts need not be a negative experience if you have a positive attitude about working with the guarantor, which is what it's all about.
Print out and give your bookkeeper a copy of the attached PDF "Handout for Bookkeeper".
Also give her a copy of and review with her the attached PDF procedure for "Past Due Control".
And if necessary, find your bookkeeper a helper to make the past due calls for her.
