What is credit management?

Financial terms such as credit management, accounts receivable and accounts payable can sometimes be confusing. These are related, but in what way exactly? Here are the most frequently asked questions answered for you.

Credit management revolves around insights into the sending, follow-up, and collection of invoices. Credit management is also known as debtor management by many entrepreneurs. But also, collection, customers’ credit information and maintaining or improving the cash flow can be included in it.

An important task of credit management is a solid debtor management. A debtor is a customer or supplier who has an amount outstanding with you. You are the creditor at that time. For example, the debtor can be a person, company, or government institution.

The moment you as an entrepreneur send an invoice to your customer, you naturally hope that the customer will pay quickly. In practice, however, this is not always the case. A customer often receives multiple invoices from all kinds of suppliers, so your invoice can be overlooked.

For good credit management, it is advisable to give your debtors a code, so that you can easily distinguish them from each other. Logical numbering reduces the chance of administrative errors. You can of course combine this with invoice numbers. But there are more things that help keep your debtor management in order.

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) is a commonly used term in credit management. It is the average duration of payment by customers, in other words: how long does it take for an invoice to be paid? The DSO differs per payment term that you use.

In the most ideal situation, the payment is received earlier than the payment term stated on the invoice. But in most cases, this is the same length or even longer. For a healthy cash flow of your company, you naturally want the DSO to be as short as possible to receive the money in your business account quickly.

Shortening the DSO is therefore an important task in credit management. An automated credit management system can help with this. For example, it appears that invoices with a payment link are paid faster than without a payment link.

The entire transaction process can be automated. This helps entrepreneurs and finance departments to keep track of outstanding invoices, especially with 100 invoices per month or more. It is also possible to combine or integrate the Buckaroo credit management solution with other software.

What does this credit management software do? Among other things:

Buckaroo offers various solutions for your debtor management and sending invoices. A logical choice if you already invested in arranging your (for example for a web shop) payment methods such as iDEAL, PayPal, Bancontact and direct debit externally.

Do you process invoices in an accounting program or invoicing system? And do you only need help with sending a payment link or a payment reminder? Buckaroo can also integrate the credit management solution with other software.