1, set up accounts receivable ledger
Enterprises in order to strengthen the management of accounts receivable, on the basis of the general ledger, and according to the name of the credit customers set up a detailed ledger, to record in detail, sequential record of the transactions with each credit customer.
The role of accounting is to provide information relevant to decision-making, and the accounts receivable ledger plays this role in the management of accounts receivable. However, the correctness of decisions will also depend on the characteristics of the information such as relevance, reliability, timeliness and completeness. Therefore, for the accounts receivable ledger set up and registration should usually pay attention to the following points:
(1) all credit sales business should be correct, timely, detailed logging of the customer's ledger, reflecting at any time the credit situation of each customer, according to the need to set up a special sales journal to reflect the credit sales.
(2) the whole process of credit sales business should be divided in charge, such as registering the ledger, fill in the credit customer's credit bill, deliver or mail the bill to the credit customer and deal with the customer's income in cash, etc., should be assigned to a person in charge.
(3) The ledger should be reconciled with the general ledger on a regular basis.
2, set up a special credit sales and credit department
Accounts receivable to collect the amount of money and the length of time depends on the customer's credit. Bad debts will result in losses and long collection periods will weaken the liquidity of accounts receivable.
So, the enterprise should set up a credit sales and credit department, specializing in investigating the credit of customers and obtaining information from the credit agency that rates the enterprise, in order to determine the creditworthiness and ability to pay of the customers who ask for credit purchases. The functions of an enterprise's credit sales and credit department in accounts receivable management are:
(1) to rate the credit status of customers;
(2) to approve the object and scale of credit sales, without which other departments and personnel of the enterprise generally have no authority to agree to credit sales;
(3) to be responsible for the timely collection of credit sales to accelerate the turnover of funds. Generally the period of collection of accounts can not be too long an interval, because in law too long a period may imply the abandonment of the claim.
Credit sales and credit department of the customer's credit status rating, the source of information, in addition to obtaining from the credit rating of the enterprise credit agency, another important source should be the ledger and sales journal book.
An important method for analyzing these two ledgers is to use an aging analysis, since the prospect of eventual collection of accounts receivable account balances diminishes with age, which is an important reason why pin discounts have been widely adopted.
The table that categorizes the balances of each customer of accounts receivable according to the age of the account we call the ageing method, we can use the ageing table to estimate the percentage of bad debts that may occur, the ageing table has another advantage, that is, it enables the manager to make special judgments about the creditworthiness of individual customers.
3, the implementation of a strict bad debt write-off system
Accounts receivable exists because of credit sales, so accounts receivable from the day of generation of the risk that may not be able to collect, that is, the risk of incurring bad debts, it can be said that bad debts are the inevitable result of credit sales.
For the credit sales as a whole, we can understand the individual bad debts as the credit sales expenses. In order to narrow down the loss of the enterprise, according to the matching principle, the bad debts incurred should be matched with the earnings and deducted from the earnings so as to present the real assets of the enterprise without inflating the owner's equity and the earnings, which is the requirement of the principle of prudence.
The treatment of bad debts by enterprises has two kinds of methods: direct write-off method and allowance method. Comparatively speaking, the allowance method is more in line with the principle of matching and the principle of prudence, and thus is favored. The allowance method is further divided into the percentage of credit sales method, the percentage of accounts receivable balance method and the aging analysis method, each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages, and different people have different preferences for these methods.
And the implementation of a strict bad debt write-off system, not to distinguish between the adoption of the method, it mainly includes the following three aspects:
(1) accurately determine whether the bad debt, bad debt write-off should be at least two people. Prepared to determine the bad debt and its amount is not an easy thing, and more than two people's hands to prevent fraud provides the possibility. For example, a salesman who pocketed the collected accounts receivable and declared it as a bad debt to his superior.
(2) in the accounts receivable ledger should be clearly documented bad debt write-off, the bad debt has been written off still need to be specialized management, as long as the debtor is not death or bankruptcy, as long as there is still a ray of hope, we can not give up. It also leaves information for future reconciliation and review.
(3) the bad debt has been written off and re-collected to be strict accounting treatment, the first to do to reproduce the accounts receivable accounting entries, and then do the accounting treatment of collection. This is conducive to managers to grasp the information: the customer's desire to recreate a good image.
Extended information:
The disadvantages of mismanagement of accounts receivable
1, reduces the efficiency of the use of funds in the enterprise, so that the efficiency of the enterprise declines.
Because of the inconsistency between the logistics and capital flow of the enterprise, the issuance of goods, issued sales invoices, the payment can not be synchronized with the recovery, and the sale has been set up, there is no payment of recorded sales revenue, is bound to produce no cash inflow from the sale of the business of profit and loss generation, sales tax on the payment of income taxes and income tax prepayment during the year.
If it involves accounts receivable resulting from sales revenue across years, it can generate corporate liquid assets to advance annual dividends to shareholders.
Enterprises due to the above pursuit of superficial benefits generated by the advance payment of taxes and advance payment of dividends to shareholders, occupying a large amount of liquidity, over time will certainly affect the turnover of enterprise funds, which in turn leads to the actual state of business operations are covered, affecting the enterprise production plan, sales plan, etc., and can not achieve the established efficiency goals.
2, exaggerated business results.
Because of China's enterprises to implement the basis of accounting is the accrual system (accounts receivable and payable system), occurring in the current period of credit sales are all recorded in the current period of income. As a result, an increase in a company's book profit does not mean that cash inflows will be realized as expected.
The accounting system requires companies to make provision for bad debts as a percentage of the accounts receivable balance, which is generally 3%-5% (except for special enterprises).
If the actual bad debt loss exceeds the bad debt provision, it will bring great loss to the enterprise. Therefore, the existence of a large number of enterprise receivables inflates the sales revenue on the books, exaggerates the operating results of the enterprise to a certain extent, and increases the risk cost of the enterprise.
3, accelerated the enterprise's cash outflow.
Credit sales although the enterprise can generate more profits, but did not really make the enterprise cash inflow increase, but instead of making the enterprise has to use the limited liquidity to advance a variety of taxes and fees, accelerating the enterprise's cash outflows, mainly manifested as:
(1) the expenditure of enterprise turnover tax. Accounts receivable to bring sales revenue, and did not actually receive cash, turnover tax is based on sales, the enterprise must be paid in cash on time. Enterprises pay turnover tax such as value-added tax, business tax, consumption tax, resource tax and urban construction tax, etc., will certainly increase with the increase in sales revenue.
(2) The expense of income tax. Accounts receivable generate profits, but not realized in cash, and the payment of income tax must be paid in cash on time.
(3) Distribution of cash profits, the same problem exists, in addition, the cost of management of accounts receivable, the cost of collection of accounts receivable can accelerate the business cash outflow.
4, have an impact on the business cycle of the enterprise.
Business cycle that is, from the acquisition of inventory to the sale of inventory, and the recovery of cash until the period of time, the length of the business cycle depends on the inventory turnover days and accounts receivable turnover days, the business cycle for the sum of the two.
This shows that the existence of unreasonable accounts receivable, so that the business cycle is prolonged, affecting the enterprise capital cycle, so that a large amount of liquidity deposited in the non-production links, resulting in a shortage of cash, affecting the payment of wages and the purchase of raw materials, seriously affecting the normal production and operation of the enterprise.
5, increased the probability of error in the accounts receivable management process, bringing additional losses to the enterprise.
Enterprises faced with a complex accounts receivable accounts, accounting errors are difficult to detect in a timely manner, can not keep abreast of the dynamic situation of receivables and receivables each other details of the enterprise, resulting in unclear responsibilities, accounts receivable contracts, contracts, promises, approvals, and other information of the scattering of the loss of the accounts receivable may make the enterprise has occurred in accounts receivable that the collection of the time to collect can not be recovered in a timely manner.
The full recovery of only part of the recovery, can be recovered through legal means, but due to incomplete information and can not be recovered, until to the ultimate formation of the loss of business unit assets.
Baidu Encyclopedia - Accounts Receivable
Baidu Encyclopedia - Accounts Receivable Management