Credit Control, Collections and Customer Disputes

Credit Policy is in Settings, under the sales group, for people with the permission to manage credit policy. The Workspace default card has a switch, Apply segment and workspace defaults, and hold overdue customers, and five figures: Default credit limit, Payment terms (days), Hold when overdue more than (days), Hold when overdue above, and A release lasts (days). The switch is off for every workspace until someone turns it on. While it is off, AWRA behaves as it always did: only a customer’s own credit limit and an approved manual hold stop an invoice.

Below it, Segments group customers who share terms, such as Key accounts or Walk-in buyers. Each segment has a Name, the same four figures (Credit limit, Payment terms, and the two overdue thresholds), a Description and a Cash only box. On a customer page, the Credit policy card shows each figure in force and where it came from, and Segment and overrides lets you put the customer in a segment and set their own terms and thresholds. The rule is simple: the customer’s own value wins over the segment’s, which wins over the workspace default. The overdue amount is compared one currency at a time; a customer owing in shillings and dollars is never judged on the two added together.

Payment terms also set the due date. When you raise an invoice, or convert a quote or sales order into one, AWRA fills the due date from the customer’s effective terms; a date you type yourself always wins. In practice: a Nairobi distributor switches the policy on with 30-day terms and a 60-day overdue hold, creates a Key accounts segment with a KES 2,000,000 limit and 45-day terms, and a Walk-in segment marked Cash only. A supermarket chain in Key accounts with its own 60-day terms gets 60 days; a new hardware shop in no segment gets the workspace’s 30.

A customer is on hold when an approved manual hold is in place, when their oldest overdue invoice is past the days threshold, when an overdue balance in any one currency is above the amount threshold, or when they sit in a cash-only segment. A new invoice for a customer on hold is saved with the status credit hold and the reasons spelled out, even if it is under the credit limit. The customer page shows the reasons, the oldest overdue days and how many invoices are held.

A hold or release is a request, not a click. On the Credit policy card, type a reason under Ask to place on hold or Ask to release the hold and click Request. Everyone who may approve credit holds, apart from you, is told in the bell, and the request appears in the Approval Inbox and on Credit Policy under Hold and release requests waiting. An approver types a reason and clicks Approve or Reject. The person who asked sees Waiting for another approver and a Withdraw button instead, because nobody may decide their own request. An approved release clears a manual hold, returns held invoices to draft for normal approval, and keeps automatic holds off for the number of days the workspace set (seven unless changed).

A plain over-limit hold can still be overridden on the invoice with a reason, as before. A policy hold cannot: the invoice’s override is refused with a message to request a release, because a one-click override on each invoice would make the two-person chain pointless. In practice: a Kisumu agro-dealer is 75 days overdue against a 60-day threshold. The sales rep requests a release with “Paid 80% today, balance promised Friday”, the credit controller approves it, the held invoice goes back to draft, and the customer can be invoiced normally for the next seven days.

Collections is a card on the Sales overview, and each customer’s Credit policy card links to their collections page. The board shows one currency at a time, with a currency switch when you have receivables in more than one, and five lanes: Current, 1–30 days, 31–60 days, 61–90 days and 90+ days. A customer sits in the lane of their oldest overdue invoice, with the split of their balance by lane alongside, so the board shows where attention is needed rather than adding unlike debts together. Filter by collector, by customers with no collector, or search by name.

Open a customer to work the account. What they owe lists one line per currency. Collector names the person responsible. Statement gives PDF and CSV exports and Email to the customer’s address, and each send is recorded on the customer’s timeline. Promises to pay takes an Amount, a Currency, a Promised by date (today or later) and a Note, then Record promise. While a promise is open and its date has not passed, the dunning ladder does not chase that customer. After the date, AWRA marks it kept if payments in that currency from the day it was recorded to the promised date reach the amount, and broken if not; broken promises stay visible on the board for 90 days. Follow-ups are tasks with a title, an assignee and a due date; the assignee is told in the bell.

Reminder history lists every dunning stage and logged email to the customer, newest first, so a collector calling the customer knows what they have already received. In practice: a Mombasa freight company’s collector opens the 61–90 lane in KES, calls a clearing agent owing KES 480,000, and records a promise of KES 300,000 by Friday with the note “Finance manager paying by M-Pesa”. She adds a follow-up for Monday to call about the balance. On Monday the promise reads kept, the reminders resume for the balance, and the follow-up is ticked Done.

A dispute is raised against an issued invoice. Staff with the permission to manage disputes use Raise dispute in the invoice’s Related menu, choose a reason (pricing, short quantity, damaged goods, wrong item, not received, duplicate billing, tax, service quality or other), describe it, optionally give the disputed amount and lines, assign it and attach evidence, including emails saved as .eml or .msg. Customers can raise one themselves from the invoice in the customer portal with What is wrong?, Describe the problem and Dispute this invoice; it lands in the same queue, marked as from the portal, and everyone who works disputes is told. A draft or cancelled invoice cannot be disputed, and an invoice with an open dispute takes comments rather than a second one.

While a dispute is open or under review, the dunning ladder does not chase that invoice. On the dispute page, Start review moves it on, Assign hands it to a colleague, and the Comments card takes notes. A comment is internal by default. Tick Reply to the customer and it appears on the dispute in the customer portal, where the customer can answer and add evidence. Every step, including who commented and who decided, is written to the audit log and shown on the dispute’s timeline.

To finish, either Draft credit note with an amount and a reason, or Close dispute with an outcome of rejected or withdrawn and a Why. In practice: a Kampala hotel disputes UGX 1.2 million of a linen invoice because twenty towels arrived torn, and uploads photos from the portal. The account manager replies to the customer that a collection is booked, then drafts a credit note for the twenty towels. The dispute closes as resolved only when that credit note is actually issued.

Credit-note approval is a workspace setting under Settings, Sales Defaults: Credit notes must be approved before they are issued, and Only when the credit is at least. It is off until a workspace switches it on. With it on, a credit note at or above the amount waits as pending approval; smaller ones are issued at once, and a threshold of 0 sends every one for approval. A pending credit note posts nothing: no ledger entry, no stock back on the shelf, no eTIMS reversal. Someone with the approve credit notes permission who did not draft it clicks Approve and issue or Reject with a reason. The author can only withdraw it, and in the Approval Inbox sees Waiting for another approver.

The Goods returned section records what physically came back. For each line give the quantity, a warehouse and a location in that warehouse, and Restock or Quarantine. When the note is issued, restocked goods return to the bin for sale, quarantined goods return to the bin on hold so they are counted but never sold, and in both cases their cost comes back out of cost of sales. A service carries no stock and cannot be returned on a credit note, and a serial-tracked item is returned as a stock check-in so each serial is named. A line cannot return more than the invoice line sold.

In practice: a Dar es Salaam pharmacy wholesaler requires approval on credits of TZS 500,000 and above. A rep drafts a TZS 740,000 credit for a returned carton of syrup, quarantining it for a quality check. The finance manager approves it the next morning; only then is the invoice reduced, the carton placed on hold in the returns bin, the cost reversed and the eTIMS credit note raised. If she had rejected it, there would be nothing to undo.