Steve Timmis is the director of Sempar Accountancy & Tax, a firm with a broad range of 300 clients in sectors including communications, creative services, hospitality and retail. Here, Steve shares how he started offering credit control as a service to clients using Satago.
Steve’s practice is client-focused; they like to have an overview of products coming into the market so they can actively find solutions for clients when problems arise.
“Clients wanted to automate more of their credit control” says Steve, “Xero does some of that for them but the Satago product is far more enhanced. Xero does a lot of things and does them very well, but we found we needed something a bit more sophisticated for automated credit control. 95% of our clients are on Xero and Satago is really easy to plug in.”
Steve spent time talking to the Satago team and building the proposition that he wanted to deliver for his clients. Once he had the details in place, he began rolling out a four-month trial period with a select group of clients.
During this trial period, he integrated a credit control discovery process into the client workflow in order to onboard clients to the service.
“For any new client coming onboard we’ll do what we call a ‘discovery’, which is spending the time understanding the customers and their relationships, making sure all the data is correct and the credit control emails are going to the right people.”
The firm also set up a debtor days report for their clients, which demonstrates the effect that Satago’s automated credit control has on their aged debt.
“We continually report to the client the debtor days they’re achieving. It goes back to cost verses benefit, if they’re paying £200 a month for credit control but they’ve got an extra £15,000 a month in their bank, it’s a no-brainer.”
Following the success of the trial, the firm is now ready to launch Satago across their full client base. This will take three to six months, with Steve aiming to onboard 10 to 15 clients a month. Within three months, the amount of time it takes to manage credit control for each client falls to one hour a week, so Steve estimates that one member of staff can manage between 30 to 50 clients.
The firm offer the ‘discovery’ process without obligation or cost. The discovery process takes one to two hours and helps them determine the level of service each client will need.
They price the service between £250 to £300 a month based on the number of active customers a client has.
“The clients are really happy. There’s a feeling of relief, just by bringing credit control disciplines in, they’re able to collect money that they’d have otherwise written off. They’re relieved that someone else is picking credit control up and having those conversations with their customers.”
If you’re interested in offering credit control as a service to your clients, sign up to Satago online or get in touch with our team today to book a demo.