With the current release from Microsoft, customers now have access to a suite of Collection process automation features aimed at increasing collections agent’s productivity, through eliminating time previously spent researching customer aged balances, open customer invoices and customer accounts. The collection manager can define a standardised workflow for agents and automatically create their tasks.
This new feature has been available for download starting from November 6th 2020.
By default, new features such as the collection process automation feature, are turned off. However, they can be turned on through the Feature management workspace.
The collection process automation feature is available in any version from 10.1.14 in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. On the Feature Management workspace, this feature can be easily identified through filtering the available features by the module Credit and Collections. Furthermore, to enable the said feature, the “Enable Now” button that appears in the details pane should be selected.
Once enabled users will have available in the Credit and Collections module two new tabs “Collections process setup” and “Process automation”.
Accounts Receivable > Setup > Accounts Receivable
The parameters configuration of the Collection process automation functionality can be accessed by navigating through the mentioned path and accessing the collection process automation Tab. Below, the two most relevant collections process automation parameters are highlighted.
Credit and collections > Setup > Collections process setup
The collections process hierarchy determines which process will be used for the company’s different customers.
When setting up the collections process hierarchy, a customer pool needs to be assigned to a collections process name. Customer pools define a group of customer records as queries that can be displayed and managed for collections or ageing processes, segregating customers, for example, by size, region, name or even agent pools. As such, customer pools are a mandatory requirement for collection process automation and can be configured, following the path:
Credit and collections > Setup > Customer pools
Additionally, the different collections processes are assigned to a specific rank in the process hierarchy, so that if customers are to fall into multiple pools (and consequently multiple collection processes), whichever collection process has the higher rank in the hierarchy will be the one applicable to said customer.
On the process hierarchy, it can also be defined as the number of quiet days of the process and exclude customers or invoices from the collection process:
For example, if a threshold of 2,000.00 USD is established for Customer ageing balances, all customers that have an ageing balance lower than 2,000.00 USD will be excluded from the collection process automation.
Thank you for taking the time to read this first of the two parts that compose this blog. We hope you found it useful.
In Part 2 we will review the remaining essential details to set up the automation process.