How to find overdue invoices and quiet accounts
Two lists that make money. Who owes you and has not paid, and who has stopped ordering without telling you.
Two different failures, two different screens. Overdue invoices are money you have earned and not collected, and quiet accounts are money you were earning and have stopped.
The second is easier to miss, because nothing appears anywhere to tell you.
How do you find overdue invoices?
On the order book, using the aging column: 1 to 30 days, 31 to 60 days, and 60 or more days.
Work the oldest first, and use the account's accounts-payable contact email rather than the buyer's address. The person who placed the order is rarely the person who pays it, and sending a chase to the wrong one adds a week.
Before you chase, check the two buckets that are not really late payers.
Not invoiced means goods have shipped and nobody has billed. That is your own job and it is usually the largest number on the screen.
No terms agreed means the account had no payment terms when the order was invoiced, so no due date could be worked out. Add terms to the account and correct the invoice date on the order, per How to invoice a wholesale order and track payment.
How do you find accounts that have gone quiet?
On Accounts, with the Gone quiet filter, meaning no order in the last 60 days. There is a Never ordered filter beside it.
Accounts are listed oldest-last-ordered first, so the list is already in the order you should work it.
Why does this list matter more than it looks?
Because a quiet account is invisible everywhere else in Tideswell.
It has no open commitment, so it is not on the order book. It owes nothing, so it is not in any aging bucket. Every screen you check daily is silent about it, and the only signal is a date that quietly gets older.
A pro shop that ordered every season for three years and has not ordered in two months has usually not decided to stop. They have changed buyer, or their rep left, or nobody called. Sixty days is early enough that a phone call still works.
Never ordered is the other half: accounts somebody set up and never followed through on. Those are cheap to chase because the relationship already exists on paper.
How do you act on one?
Open the account, check who the rep is, and hand somebody the call.
A callback carries the person, the number and the reason, records each attempt, and shows on the assignee's list until it is closed. That is more likely to happen than a note in a spreadsheet. See How to log and work through callbacks.
If the rep shows as a dash, the account belongs to nobody, which is usually the reason it went quiet in the first place. Reassign it while you are there.
What is the routine worth keeping?
Monthly, both lists in one sitting.
Overdue invoices in order of age, then quiet accounts in order of how long they have been silent. One recovers money you have already earned, and the other recovers customers you already had, which are the two cheapest kinds of revenue there are.
Record what you agreed as a decision on the account, so the next person knows why the terms changed. See What are decisions and track records?.