Streamline taking payments for a customer

[awardsguy]

Many times we have colleges, govenment and businesses that come in and although they may have a net 30 with us, they'll want to pay with a credit card on smaller orders rather than do the net 30 thing. It's a pain that takes a long time to process. Can we take payments on accounts just like it's a "counter sale" even on a customer's account? Typically, we won't know how they're paying until they show up and the order may already be closed and/or completed. The slow process really makes us look bad. I just updated to the latest version and can't find a "help" area, so some of my questions may have already been addressed...if there is a "help" area with documentation like there used to be a few years ago, please let me know where that is so I don't ask for information that is readily available elsewhere-

[M. David Matney]

Many times we have colleges, govenment and businesses that come in and although they may have a net 30 with us, they'll want to pay with a credit card on smaller orders rather than do the net 30 thing. It's a pain that takes a long time to process. Can we take payments on accounts just like it's a "counter sale" even on a customer's account? Typically, we won't know how they're paying until they show up and the order may already be closed and/or completed. The slow process really makes us look bad. I just updated to the latest version and can't find a "help" area, so some of my questions may have already been addressed...if there is a "help" area with documentation like there used to be a few years ago, please let me know where that is so I don't ask for information that is readily available elsewhere-

We are doing a complete rewrite of the users manual. The new users manual will be available online and the intent is to have BizWizard link directly to the pages in context sensitive help format. The new users manual will also have videos that pertain to the help topic to give live demonstrations. We hope to have this complete by tradeshow in march 2010

The accounts receivable portion of the system (where payments are posted to invoices) is a locked down function so that you can ***ign only certain employees in your organization with access to accounts receivable access. This prevents employees who are not trained on accounts receivable from accessing sensitive information about your business and makes these functions available on a need to know basis. This is why posting of payments to invoices is not open to all staff by default (or course you can open it up in the ***ociate security if you like)

With this said, we are looking at a way to add the ability to do a one time payment to a customer invoice from the order screen. One thing that will solve this dilemna that has worked quite well with trophy shops in the past is to do the following:

When taking the customers order, while the customer is standing at your counter, simply indicate to them "The order total will be $10.00, would you like to put that on a credit card now?" - at that time, its a nice way to ask the customer for payment at order entry time, and the customer will tell you one of two things:

A) sure, can you put it on my credit card? and they will hand you a credit card.

B) Can you direct bill it to our company?

At order entry time you have accomplished two things. You have potentially reduced your accounts receivable as you will find most will simply hand you the credit card, and two you know how they plan to pay for the order. You achieved both objectives in a business friendly way that is not offensive to the customer.

by doing this you will alleviate most of the situations you are describing. BizWizard is designed to work with this process flow of asking the customer for payment up front. we have seen stores that used this process lower their receivables by over 50%. Give it a try.

[awardsguy]

I will, but remeber what the response was when I brought this up in the booth last year. Every one of the customers in the booth were shaking their head "yes". It is a problem. Thanks for seeing what you can do to address it.

[M. David Matney]

You can now post payments to individual invoices without using payment batches.