How To Batch Process Using Contact Plans

Click Start to process pending automatic Contact management events. The Contact events we are going to process were scheduled with Contact plans.

You can create Contact plans that automatically decide what to do with an account.

You can handle hundreds of accounts automatically and reliably.

Run Contact plans by clicking the Action button on the Debtor form. Some scheduled events can be handled automatically by Collect!'s batch processing functions.

Below are a few examples. They are limited in their scope of course, being examples, but understand that you can do many things with Contact plans.

Pull down the Tools menu, choose Batch Processing. This is where the Process automatic contacts previously scheduled option allows you to batch process events set up by all the automated plans you run.

Batch processes tax the system heavily, simulating the actions of one hundred users at a time! For fastest batch operations, use Exclusive mode.

To design new Contacts plans, pull down the System menu and choose Contact Management Settings, Contact Plans. Press F3 to create a new plan and press F1 for help.

Example 1 - New Business Contact Plan

Design a Contact plan for new accounts that:

activates the account

sets the status

schedules a letter to print in today's batch

assigns an Operator

schedules a review for that Operator in 10 days

schedules a automated review Contact plan to run in 30 days

At this point, you run this Contact plan on a set of new accounts. Each account receives its letter in the next few days.

Some send money and pay their bill. Those accounts are closed when the payment is posted (refer to the CLO Contact plan), so the pending Operator review and other Contacts are deleted and never clutter any Operator's To Do list.

Others don't respond within the 1st 10 days and the account appears in the Operator's WIP list. As the Operator works the account, payment may or may not have been received. If payment is received, the account is closed and never appears on a WIP again.

If the account is not closed after 30 days, the automated review Contact is run by the process you are following right now. When that plan runs, it reviews the file and decides whether to close the file, leave it in the Operator's WIP list, or escalate the file by assigning it to another Operator.

Here is an example of the automated review Contact plan:

Example 2 - Automatic Review Contact Plan

Now design the automated review Contact Plan:

If the Debtor owing is less than $50, close the account.

If the owing is greater than $1000, assign a new Operator.

Otherwise leave the account for the current Operator to work.

This plan will be run every day when you process scheduled events with the Tools menu Batch Processing option.

Every Collect! User is certain to think of many other more reasonable options to suit their way of doing business. With Collect!, this is simple; you just need to pull down the System menu and choose Contact Management Settings, Contact Plans. Then you can create new plans with the F3 key and press F1.

An example of a letter series plan may be illustrative here.

One type of account you may work might be a low dollar account for which you only want to send a letter series, and close if there's no activity after 90 days.

You could build a plan with three letters that go out at incremental time delays, and finally a close event could be scheduled.

Example 3 - Letter Series Contact Plan

Design a plan for three letters and a close.

Letter 1, schedule immediately

Letter 2, 15 days delay

Letter 3, 30 days delay

Close, 90 days delay

When you run this plan on a new account the three letters will be sent and the account closed after 90 days.

If a payment is made the automatic plan that runs might be set to assign the account to a desk if it's a partial payment.