Should sales be responsible for overdue accounts receivable?
Focusing on whether sales teams should bear responsibility for overdue accounts receivable, this article reviews two common corporate practices: incorporating collection metrics into sales KPIs, or delegating to collections and credit risk control departments. Practitioners are invited to share their experiences to provide reference for accounts receivable management.
In enterprise accounts receivable management, a core point of contention is whether sales personnel performance evaluations should be tied to customer payment discipline. In other words, should the sales team be responsible for overdue accounts receivable? This issue is handled very differently across companies.
Some enterprises directly incorporate payment-related metrics into the sales team's KPI system, requiring sales personnel not only to meet sales targets but also to track the progress of payment collection and bear direct responsibility for overdue accounts. In this model, sales personnel bonuses are closely linked to customer payment behavior, prompting them to assess customer credit before sales, follow up on payment milestones during sales, and proactively collect payments after sales.
Other enterprises adopt a separation strategy: the sales team focuses on order acquisition and customer relationship maintenance, while the collection of overdue accounts receivable is handled by a dedicated collection department or credit risk prevention team. In this structure, sales personnel bonuses do not depend on customer payment discipline, thereby avoiding potential conflicts between sales and collection, but it may also lead to insufficient attention to customer credit status by sales.
In industry observations, the author has seen both of the above models adopted by enterprises, each with its own pros and cons. The first model can strengthen sales personnel's sense of responsibility across the entire process, but may increase non-sales burdens and even affect customer relationships; the second model facilitates specialized division of labor, but requires guarding against information gaps between sales and risk control.
How is your enterprise handling this? Does the sales team's KPI include collection metrics? Who is responsible for overdue accounts receivable—sales, the collection department, or the credit risk control department? Are sales personnel bonuses tied to customer payment discipline? Welcome to share your practical experience and insights to promote mutual learning and optimization within the industry.