# Payments followed up on schedule, every time For finance teams and owners who sell on credit. Agents follow up every open invoice in the customer's language, record each promise and dispute, match what is paid and bring your team the cases that need a person. [Talk to the team](https://qantara.systems/contact) / [Read the thesis](https://qantara.systems/original/thesis) Six open invoices, followed up on time. Each row is a customer. The dots are reminders sent as today, the blue line, passes; what came back is at the end of the row. Orange went to your team. A late payment is often just an invoice nobody asked about. We put agents on every open invoice, so each one is asked about on time. ## What the agents do around every open invoice Four desks touch the money between the invoice and the bank: credit control, which asks for it, cash application, which finds it when it comes, the people who settle disputes, and whoever keeps the cheques and notes held as security. Agents work alongside all four, inside the systems you already run. ### Credit control: Every invoice asked about at its moment Which customers have heard nothing from us since their invoice fell due? - **Keep a rhythm for each customer.** A courteous note before the due date, a reminder on it, firmer ones after: the cadence your team sets for each kind of customer, kept for every invoice, large or small. - **Write as your team would.** In Arabic or English, on WhatsApp or by email, with the invoice, the delivery note and the statement attached, in the tone you use with that customer. - **Hold the customer to their word.** A promise to pay is recorded with its date and amount. On that date the bank is checked, and a promise that slips is followed up the same morning. - **Hand over with the whole thread.** An account that stops answering, or owes more than your threshold, goes to the person you name with every message, promise and document in one place. ### Cash application: Every payment matched to what it pays How much in the bank is not matched to an invoice yet? - **Read the bank every morning.** Transfers, cheques cleared and card settlements are read from your bank feeds, with the payer's name as the bank shows it, which is rarely the name on the account. - **Match one transfer to many invoices.** A customer who pays a month's invoices in one transfer, or part of one invoice, is matched line by line, using their remittance advice when they send one and asking for it when they do not. - **Find whose money it is.** A payment nobody can place is matched from the amount, the reference and the customer's history, and asked about before it sits unapplied for a month. - **Close the loop with the customer.** The customer is told what their payment was applied to, so their statement and yours agree before the next reminder goes out. ### Disputes: Disputes settled, the rest still collected How much is overdue only because something is in dispute? - **Find the paper behind the complaint.** A short delivery, a price that differs from the order or a missing purchase order number is checked against the signed delivery note, the order and the price list. - **Fix the cause, not only the case.** The same complaint from the same customer, branch or route, month after month, is shown to the person who can fix it at the source. - **Put it with the person who can settle it.** Sales, the warehouse or the driver gets the dispute with the evidence, and a date by which an answer is due. - **Close it with the right document.** A credit note against the original invoice, a replacement delivery or a corrected invoice, issued once and sent to the customer with the outcome. [See orders and confirmations](https://qantara.systems/solutions/orders) ### Cheques and notes: Every cheque and note in one register Which cheques fall due this week, and which notes would still hold up? - **Register what you hold.** Post-dated cheques, promissory notes and guarantees are entered with the customer, the bank, the date and the invoices they cover, the day the salesman hands them in. - **Present each one on its date.** The cheques due each day are listed for the bank run, and each is matched to its invoices when it clears. - **Act the day one comes back.** A returned cheque reaches credit control with the account, the other cheques that customer has given and what your policy says to do next. - **Keep guarantees in date.** Bank guarantees and credit limits that rest on them are listed before they expire, so the customer is asked to renew while there is still time. ## Beyond the four desks Some money is owed in ways that do not fit a reminder: through a buyer's portal, held back until a project is handed over, on a statement the customer disputes as a whole, or under a credit insurance policy with its own deadlines. - **Invoices on a buyer's portal.** Government bodies and large groups pay through their own portals, where an invoice moves through approval stages. The agent follows each one's stage and tells you which are stuck, and at whose desk. No invoice lost inside a buyer's approvals. - **Retentions, asked for at handover.** On contracts that hold back part of each payment until completion, the agent keeps the retention on the record and asks for it with the handover documents when the work is accepted. Retentions collected, not forgotten. - **Statements that agree.** When a customer's ledger and yours differ, the agent sets one against the other, finds the missing payments, credit notes and duplicates, and sends a reconciled statement. One balance both sides accept. - **The credit insurer, told on time.** Policies ask for overdue accounts to be reported within their own deadlines. The agent tracks each policy's dates and prepares the notice with the history attached. Cover kept, because the insurer heard in time. ## How it works for collections 01 **Embed.** Our engineers go through a month of open invoices with your finance team: which were asked about, by whom and when, and which were never asked about at all. That becomes the baseline and shows where to start. 02 **Build.** An agent reads each reply against the invoice. When a customer disputes one line, it checks the signed delivery note, sets that line aside for the person who settles it, and keeps asking for the rest. 03 **Scale.** When the same customer buys from several of your companies, the record adds up what they owe all of them. Credit is decided on the whole, and each company hears it at once. 04 **Measure.** What is overdue, by how long, against the month before we start, with the hours your team spends chasing, counted with finance. ## The paper behind your credit is changing Much of the credit in Gulf trade is secured with paper: post-dated cheques, promissory notes, bills of exchange. The rules on what each one lets you do when a customer does not pay are being rewritten, country by country, and a note signed on paper years ago may not do what you expect. Agents keep a register of every instrument you hold, check each one against the rules where it was signed, and ask customers to replace the ones that need it, well before they are needed. The cheques and notes you hold, checked. Each instrument is read in turn: a check means it is in order, an orange ring that it was signed only on paper and has to be reissued. ## Built around the systems you run Nothing has to be replaced to start. Agents work inside your ERP and accounting, read your bank feeds, and write to customers on the channels they already answer. - ERP and accounting - Bank feeds - Cheque register - CRM - WhatsApp Business - Email - Buyer portals - E-invoicing - Spreadsheets ## What finance teams ask us **Will this damage our customer relationships?** A reminder on time, in the customer's language and with the right papers attached, is usually welcome. The tone is yours to set, and the accounts you name stay with the people who manage them. **Which accounts stay with our team?** The ones you choose: key accounts, government buyers, anyone above a balance you set. For those the agent prepares the statement and the history, and your team makes the call. **Does the agent call customers?** It writes, on WhatsApp and by email, in Arabic or English, and prepares the call for whoever on your team makes it. **What happens when a cheque comes back?** Your policy decides what happens next, and the agent prepares it: the letter to the customer, the request for a replacement, or the file for your lawyer. **Is it worth it if our customers pay in the end?** Paying in the end is the cost: the cash is late, and the reminders it took came out of your team's week. **Do you replace our ERP or our bank?** No. Promises, disputes and matches are written into the ERP you already run, and the bank is read, never instructed. Your team keeps the screens it knows. **Where do we start?** With a month of one company's open invoices, read with your finance team, and the channel your customers already answer on. ## Collections in your industry - [Logistics and freight](https://qantara.systems/solutions/logistics): Quotes, bookings, customs and delivery, on time. - [Distribution and trading](https://qantara.systems/solutions/distribution): Orders confirmed, delivered and collected. - [Manufacturing and industrial](https://qantara.systems/solutions/manufacturing): Suppliers, schedules and the line kept moving. ## Start with the invoices that wait longest Tell us how open invoices are followed up today and who does it. Our engineers take it from there, on site. [Talk to the team](https://qantara.systems/contact) / [Email us](mailto:hello@qantara.example) Muscat and across the Gulf --- This is the Markdown twin of the page at https://qantara.systems/solutions/collections