About credit control

Credit control is a facility which assists in the recovery of outstanding bills delivered to your clients and/or third parties. It allows you to chase outstanding bills while maintaining detailed information such as; the bill/credit control status, the credit control stage, the relevant dates, the history of the debt, the steps taken to recover the debt (and by whom) and any communication with the client regarding the bill. A number of features exist within Legal Enterprise that specifically assist with credit control.

How does it work?

Credit control payment terms (set up by administrators) define the default payment term (e.g. 30 days) and credit limit for new clients and matters, and the credit control workflow to be automatically attached to new bills. With these in place, you can view outstanding bills and use the credit control workflow (shipped as standard, but can be modified if required) to automate the "chase" process. For example, it can be used to automatically produce chasing letters (of which a number are also shipped as standard) or diary reminders, etc. Each step is then recorded in history and progress indicated by credit control statuses.

Additionally, statements can be produced for your clients (or invoicees) and matters, which list all their outstanding bills. Statement templates can be created (in the same way as regular merge templates) and used to make statements "client-ready".

Notes

• Credit control functions can be used by anyone with Accounts permissions.

• The software does not automatically enforce client and matter credit limits (e.g. by preventing further bills being raised if a client or matter is over their credit limit) without the use of pre/post-event hooks.

• A default credit control workflow – CREDITCTRL – is shipped as standard. This can be used "as is" or modified to meet your own requirements.

• The following default chase letters are shipped as standard:

• Client Statement

• Invoice Letter Before Action

• Invoicee Letter 1

• Invoicee Letter 2

• Invoicee Letter 3

• Invoicee Letter Before Action

• Invoicee Statement

• Matter Letter 1

• Matter Statement

• The example workflow/letters shipped as standard can be used with the following pre/post events – Post Accounts and Create Matter.

• When producing statements, the statement template must have the same entity as the consolidate option (e.g. matter). If not, a warning message is displayed which prevents any statements from being merged.