Credit Control

Sage 50 Credit control letter using Search

The search feature allows you to pick a group of records.  For credit control letters we want to send a gentle reminder, a firm request and a final demand.  You can easily create these letters in the Customer:Letters Module but how do you mail the right letter to the right people.

Well for some reason most people seem to grasp this easier if we work in reverse!

The Final Demand wants to go to the people who have not yet got a balance in the Older column of an aged listing (those guys should be with solicitors) and have a balance that is over 90 days.

The firm request wants to go to the people who have a 60 days balance but no older balances (if they had they would get something stronger).

The gentle reminder wants to go to those over 30 days but not older

If you use different ageing then the numbers will be different but the principle is the same.

We will create 3 searches, gentle, firm and final to select each of our groups.

1. The final: Where older = 0 and 90days is greater than zero
2. The firm: Where older=0 and 90days = 0 and 60days is greater than 0
3. The gentle: Where older=0 and 90days=0 and 60days = 0 and 30Days is greater than 0

Save the searches as you build them.

In use: Go to search select the group you want, go to letter and print letter. Do this for all three groups and you have the job done.

Q&A

Q: What if I have a customer who I want to exclude from the mailings?

A1: If you want to remove them from all mailing you can use a flag in their customer record e.g. Restrict Mailing.  

A2: If you just want to stop the this time, after applying the search select the customer you do not want to mail then hit swap and you will be mailing everyone but those you selected.

Q: What should my letter say?

A: Checkout the bookshop and see

Getting dot matrix printers to run faster under Windows

The major problems with printing to dot matrix printers in Windows is that they are so slow.

Whilst this will speed things up considerably, you are never going to get really high speed without changing your printer.

The secret behind resolving this issue is in choosing the right font! Windows prints virtually all fonts as graphics. However, it does also support the built in fonts of the printer.  You may not like the appearance of these built in fonts as much but at least it will work faster.

So choose a report to try it out on and here goes:-

Edit your base report

Save it with a different file name but in the same directory (File, Save As) do this first so that you don't accidentally hit save and overwrite your original after all it may go wrong.

Select the items or a style to change. Select a built-in printer font from the drop down box (try an get one a similar size or you will have a mess if you have Draft as an option try it first if may be even quicker)

Save the report again and print!