The Most Important Relationship for Your Account Receivables Manager

It’s important to choose the right account receivables manager. They need to be someone who is, of course, talented in finance and accounting, but one of the most important skills your account receivables manager can have is excellent relationship building skills.

One of the easiest, and often overlooked, ways of keeping your day’s sales outstanding (DSO) low is to have an AR manager who builds connections with the account payable's managers of your clients.

The fastest way to get anything done is to know who to talk to, right? The CEO of the company isn’t going to be much help in politely pushing to get paid on time. Neither is the COO. When your account receivables manager makes the effort to be on a first name basis with all of the account payable's managers he or she works with, it’s much, much easier to take care of any issues before they arise.

One of the strategies for keeping your account receivables under control is to adjust your billing schedule to your client’s payment authorization system or schedule. If everything has to be verified by an executive before it gets paid and that only happens once a week, your account receivables manager will learn that from their account payables manager.

If one of your clients is having cash flow problems and unfortunately will be late with the payment, an account payables manager who has a good relationship with your account receivables manager will let you know ahead of time that the payment might be delayed. It's nice to know ahead of time rather than being caught off guard.