Ten Truths about the Credit Function
By Michael C. Dennis, MBA, CBF
and Steven Kozack

1. Employers and managers do a great job of recording your mistakes, and a lousy job of recording your successes.

2. There is usually a high degree of correlation between the importance of receiving payment on one hand, and the chances that the payment in question will be "lost in the mail."

3. Customers are eager to establish payment plans to retire past due invoices - right up until the time that payments become due and payable.

4. The more a customer complains about a negative credit decision, the more likely the decision was correct.

5. Customers rarely if ever notify a vendor about pricing problems or short shipments until the invoice is seriously past due.

6. A good salesperson is a friend to everyone in the company - except the credit manager.

7. Customers that say: "Your company has never lost a dime doing business with us" apparently have never heard of the concept in economics called: The time value of money.

8. If there is a way for an order in your system to somehow bypass standard credit approval process and be "accidentally" released, you can bet that a salesperson is looking for it right now.

9. When customers need copies of lost invoices, it is almost never a small dollar invoice. It is usually one of the largest past due invoices.

10. The more a customer complains about having to provide their financial statements to you in order to receive the credit limit they need, the more likely it is that the customer is having financial difficulties.