While we are in Florida, if you would like to meet with us one on one, now is the time to contact us. Let's meet and discuss where our companies are going in the future.

In celebration of our company's 20th year, we want to invite those who are going to Florida to join us for dinner and drinks while we are there. Seats are limited so reserve now - To RSVP email sales@collect.org with information on how many people in your party will be joining us.

The new Dynamic Attachments sample can be downloaded from the Collect! Member Center with instructions for implementing it.

Services Liaison Program
As the manager of the Member Services Team I am pleased and proud to introduce our new Services Liaison Program for our Full Membership customers. A Services Liaison will be assigned to your account to become your single point of contact for all of your Collect! technical needs. Initial assignment will be made on familiarity with your business, yourself and your authorized contact personnel. Financial considerations will continue to be taken care of by our friendly and competent Administration and Sales staff.

Service Liaisons will be your company's in house champion. They will ensure your requests and projects are assigned to the appropriate Services Technician for a speedy completion. In depth understanding of your business and cultivating appropriate contacts for specific requests and projects will be part of an on-going process.

A letter will be forthcoming introducing your company's Service Liaison followed up by an email then a phone call. On-going regular contact will be made by your Service Liaison with yourself or your assigned contact.

Should you have any questions or concerns about this program please do not hesitate to contact me Adrian Melville, Manager, Member Services Team. Should you receive your letter and want to contact your liaison before their outgoing call to you, feel free to do so by calling 250-391-0466 or emailing adrian@collect.org.

Send Help Page Feedback To Comtech
Each help page on our web site will now have a link enabling users to send feedback to Member Services with an email. Your feedback is very important to us and will help us improve our documentation. Please select the link at the bottom of any help page to send comments and ideas to info@collect.org regarding the help page you are viewing.

Recent Debtor List
The new Browse menu option, Recent Debtor List, enables you to quickly return to any one of the last ten debtors you were viewing. Go back to the account you were on a while ago with just one click. Collect! updates this list continually, always displaying the ten most recent accounts that you were working. It's fast and easy to increase your productivity with this simple solution.

Please refer to Help Topic, Recent Debtor List for details.

Numerics Only Phone Fields
A new option in Options, Sounds and Colors enables you to strip non-numerics from Phone numbers as they are entered into Collect!. This makes it very easy to set up your accounts for compatibility with auto dialing systems. Phone numbers are automatically configured to the numerics only format required for these systems, as soon as you leave any phone field. This will also strip non-numerics from Phone fields filled during an import routine.

Please refer to Help Topic, Screen and Messages for details.

Strip Check Digit
Three new Check Digit report codes enable you to output Check Digit information in three new formats. These commands strip non-numerics from the data field before generating the Check Digit.

Please refer to Help Topic, How To Generate A Check Digit for more information.

Attached Documents
A new choice in the Browse menu gives you quick access to any Client or Debtor data folder. Collect! stores attached documents in a folder with the Client or Debtor file number. You can easily access this folder when on any Client or Debtor by selecting Browse, Attached Documents.

Validate Date Entry
This new switch in the Date Format form enables Collect! to check the validity of dates between 1971 and 2037 as they are entered into any Date field. The user will be prompted if Collect! cannot validate the date and they can revisit their entry and correct it.

Disable Printing
This new switch in the Operator Detail gives you the ability to stop an operator from printing in Collect!. This feature can be used with Access Rights to enable the operator to perform the printing functions you need while eliminating the freedom to print whatever they want. This is very useful to restrict access to printing functions in Collect! while not hampering the operator from performing their normal functions that require printing.

Please refer to Help Topic, Operator Detail for more information.

Browse for File Path
The new BROWSE button in Report Options enables you to navigate to a folder of your choice when creating reports printed to FILE. The Print Report form also has this BROWSE button for selecting or changing the file path when the report is printed. This new feature is very useful for power users who want to be able to send reports to several different stations or locations. You can easily navigate to the correct location and Collect! will conveniently fill in the complete path information for you, saving time and eliminating errors.

Subject Line in Emails
The @SUBJECT command is a very handy report writer function for printing to EMAIL. It enables you to personalize the email's Subject. This makes it very easy for your email recipients to identify your important emails with a glance at their email Inbox. You can now insert database information in the Subject line, as well as text strings. This works when printing from a single account and also in your letter batches.

Please refer to Help topic, How to Add a Subject When Printing to Email for more details.

Control Key Macro
A new utility in the Tools, Utilities menu enables you to use a hot key combination to load and execute a previously recorded and saved macro. When you have enabled the hot key and specified a file, you can press Ctrl+F12 to load and execute the macro.

Please refer to Help topic, Control Key Macro for more details.

Web Host Interface
The Web Host has a fresh new look with updated graphics and colors. If you are already using a customized Web Host, you may still be able to utilize the great new look since it is accomplished mostly with the collect.css and a few new graphics.

Please refer to demo at https://www.collectsystem.cc.

We also had an RFE (Request for Enhancement). Kevin wants to see Comtech start adding support for Linux. We responded saying that Linux support was on the roadmap for our next product. We think that open source has a lot of things to offer business and will be keeping that in mind for our next major version. Join into this conversation at Requests for Enhancement.

In the "How do I" section of the forum we have had discussions on the WIP ( Work in Progress ) List our new set time zone control files, reports and transactions which was never fully answered, if you have a response to offer sign in at Version 11 How do I Questions.

1) Email: Does your software system allow instant email contact with the customer? Email is almost cost free, instant, traceable and clearly one of the best ways to communicate with customers. Your software system must allow single or batch mass sending of email directly to customers. Send them web-style HTML emails that contain your request for payment, your corporate images and links to on-line payment methods. Replacing costly letter campaigns with email contact can drastically help reduce costs. Your software also needs to have a verification process that only allows emails to be sent to customers who have personally authorised email contact and should also contain a standard disclaimer approved by your legal department that protects the sender from any recourse.

2) SMS: Does your software allow you to instantly send an SMS to the customer directly from their customer screen? SMS is a low cost and instantaneous method of reminding customers that scheduled payments are due, promised payments have been missed or to contact you regarding another matter. Your software should allow you to send single or mass batch SMS to customers. If your software allows this then all you require is a GSM Terminal and you're ready to send SMS directly from your customer screen. Ensure your software has a verification process that only allows SMS to be sent to customers who have personally authorised SMS contact and clearly shows the time, date and collector with whom the agreement was made.

3) Electronic Correspondence History: Does your software keep a copy of every piece of correspondence sent or received between you and a customer? Your software should keep a complete electronic copy of every piece of outbound correspondence that you send a customer via email, SMS or printed letter. Merely storing the name of the letter and the date it was sent is not adequate anymore. You should be able to retrieve at a simple click the full contents (including names, address, amounts and wording) and layout of the letter, email or SMS that you sent a customer directly from the customer screen. This is a powerful tool in dispute resolution and also can prove valuable in cases that make it to the legal system.

Likewise your system should be able to store inbound correspondence such as dispute letters and copies of contracts that the customer may send you. Your software should allow you to scan any piece of correspondence and have it easily attach to the customer account screen so your collectors can, at a click, view and retrieve all copies of correspondence the customer has sent you without trolling through masses of filing cabinets or through other 3rd party databases that store correspondence.

The easier it is for your staff to quickly communicate with the people that owe you money and at the same time reduce overheads then the greater the return to your company. Ensure you have software that is up to date and gives you the best possible chance of achieving this.

John Ellwood is the Australasian Regional Manager of Collect! Credit and Collection software. For more information email john@collectsoftware.com.au, phone 07 3117 2653 or visit our website at http://www.collectsoftware.com.au.

By using your own logo on the splash screen it would help solidify the perception of good relations with your software vendor to your clients, then, it does not have the look of an off the shelf (out of the box) solution. Please refer to Help topic, Customize Splash Screen for more details.

You may also send the specifications for your logo to Comtech and engage our services team to develop your logo if you do not presently have a viable company logo. Simply send the information on what you want your logo to represent to support@collectsoftware.cc and one of our member services team will contact you.

Benefits of Technology Investments
While all companies have financial goals to hit and typically evaluate technology investments based on return on investment (and rightly so), technology provides benefits that are often hard to take into account in a return on investment calculation. Technology investments can provide improved client and customer relations along with increased efficiencies within an organization. For instance, providing Internet payment options a business allows customers to make a payment on their account no matter where they are located.

Budget dollars spent on technology can also increase employee satisfaction. Streamlining payment files from the Web, customer service rep, IVR, and home banking into one file can decrease the frustration of dealing with multiple payment files everyday. Also, by integrating the payment flow into your current accounts receivable software you can eliminate the manual processes associated with payment acceptance such as payment posting and NSF returns management. These types of benefit are often difficult to quantify on the surface, however, if a business does a true cost analysis of the amount of man hours being allotted simply to payment acceptance it becomes apparent what cost savings can result from technological automation.

The introduction of new technology does often pose challenges to organizations for a number of reasons. One of the biggest challenges is to gain user acceptance and adoption of the new technology while maintaining an acceptable level of productivity and performance. A number of factors influence an individual's attitude toward new technology, including gender, age, and peers' perceptions and attitudes. While all of these factors should be considered during the planning stages of implementation, the focus should be placed on implementation methods.

The most important step in not only evaluating new technology but also in the implementation process is to partner with a vendor expert that knows you specific industry. The chosen vendor should also have strong relationships in place with the technology providers you utilize today.

Electronic Payment Providers (EPP) partners with providers such as Collect! within your market and offers a suite of powerful integrated payment solutions for both ACH and Card payments. For a free evaluation of your current practices or for a quote on establishing a multi-channel payment strategy, please contact EPP at (877) 377-2677 or visit our web site at http://www.expresspayments.com.

Third-party debt collectors work with First-party collectors or credit grantors to secure the payment of debts that have not been paid. As a professional debt collector you will locate consumers, determine why a bill or debt has not been paid and work with the debtor to get the payment. Unforeseen circumstances such as illness, death, job loss or divorce can sometimes cause an otherwise good credit risk customer to plunge into a situation where they cannot pay their bills.

A collection agency is a service business. Bill collectors act as agents for clients who could not get paid for products or services that they provided to their customers. A business places past due accounts with an agency and the agency tries to collect for them. Some agencies collect what is due on the bill and keep a commission on what they collected, and then send the client the balance of the money. Some agencies charge a flat rate for collection efforts.

Agencies can collect for hospitals, physicians, lawyers, retailers, service providers, and many other types of businesses. Any business that extends credit or accepts checks may have a need for a collection agency.

There are many laws an agency must follow when collecting debts. You should familiarize yourself with those laws and keep them available for reference. I include a listing of these laws in my book; I also include a listing of what you can and cannot do when collecting money that is owed to your clients.

Collection agencies have a terrible reputation caused by a few agencies that have created bad names in the industry. This is why you should follow the FDCPA closely. Surprisingly, not all agencies follow the FDCPA.

Some collection agencies collect in different ways, some only collect by mail, some by mail and phone and some only with legal action. You will need to decide which type of agency you want to have.

Collection agencies do not normally get paid by the hour. Instead, they work on a commission basis, therefore if you do not collect, you do not get paid. Commissions range from 25%% on young accounts to 50%% on those that are older or small balances. For instance, a collection service that gets the debtor to pay a $1,000 medical bill will earn $250 to $500 depending on the age of the debt and the agreement with their client. Typical annual gross revenues range from $30,000 to $60,000 based on a 25%% commission for collections of $10,000 to $20,000 per month (the average for a small collection service.)

This article is taken from "Starting a Collection Agency, How to make money collecting money 3rd edition", by Michelle Dunn. This book is the only award winning, comprehensive book on how to start and manage a collection service. Available at http://www.MichelleDunn.com