Sage 100

Has anyone worked with the Anytime Colletion tool from E2B with Sage 100? We have a client using an old extended solution to track notes for colletions purposes. We are going to upgrade them from 4.1 to 4.5. We can get the Extended Solution moved forward but they aren't thrilled with it and would like to look at another solution for managing collections.

Oh, just had a client ask about a collection add-on! Eager to here what others are using.

How about CRM or Invoice/Customer Memo's?

I thought CRM was the collection tool of the future???

I thought of CRM and we will investigate that with them as well. @MarkKotyla Invoice/Customer Memo's we thought about. The add-on essentially worked with Invoice Memo's and included them on the Aged Receivable's report. They would like to get to something more robust. We aren't a CRM shop so we would have to farm that out. The Collection Manager tool can either be loaded on-prem or run as a cloud solution. Regardless, I will update the group on the approach the client chooses and the level of success we achieve.

You can include invoice memos on the A/R aging without a mod. Just modify the Crystal report.

Thanks Dawn.

We use Anytime Collect internally with our MAS 90 system and really like it. It has been a great tool.

@JenniferChriston I have lots of questions but I will try to make this short 1) What version; Standard or Enterprise? 2) On premesis or hosted? 3) Why not just track activity in notes on the invoice? 4) Is it worth $2,000 per user? 5) Most important - would you recommend it to a friend? Thanks for your help!

At $2K per user, it better be an awesome tool. @PeterWolf is the CRM firm in the group. There are others working with it (Brian Buck, Alan Niergarth are just a few). For the FREE initial license, it might be worth looking at it even if you do outsource to someone else. At least this will get you in the game and then you can decide if it is something worth pursuing as a firm.

@JeffSchwenk Thanks for the pointer to @PeterWolf. I thought of the CRM approach but not sure what woudl be needed to tweek to manage receivables with an outstanding AR view with notes and followup dates by account by invoice. That's what a CCM does. Anyway, we have some options and will go over them with client. Thank you again for your help and suggestions. It's nice having you guys at our backs.

Peter may already have this as several others have asked about it.

Hi @ShawnSlavin - we acutally publish a collections tool built within Sage CRM under our subsidiary company, TechnoTropic. The product is called AR Collections + (aka ARC+). Info can be found at: http://www.technotropic.com/collection-management.html We built it into CRM because it's a natural place for sales and collections and tracking of history. In a lot of organizations, the account managers are responsible for collections calls so they simply pull up the account, go to the Collections tab, review open invoices and then call on their account. Even if they aren't responsible for calls, it's good information for sales to know if clients have paid bills. That way they are informed regarding commission checks and also if they should make additional sales to a particular account or not. CRM is great for recording the history and then reviewing and analyzing the information. With our product, you can quickly pull up and review all outstanding collections by company or by invoice and then quickly work through the list and add in call notes or follow up activities (confirm check was in the mail, etc.). Currently ARC+ works with Accpac only. I floated the idea of making a Sage 100 ERP (MAS) version a while back. Robert helped us a bit but frankly the MAS database connections seem very ... ugly and it seems like it would be a a bit of work. I'm always open to dusting this idea off though and one option is that we could build a loose integration like Anytime Collection has done. This avoids the sticky problems of dealing with the Sage 100 ERP integration points. Current pricing is at Accpac module level pricing - meaning that it is priced the same as a module - plus 21% annual M&S. Dealer margins are 20%. We are shifting to a subscription model which will be $1200 annually or $110 monthly. Partners will make 30% - either up-front in the case of customer paying annually up-front or in-arrears in the case of the customer paying monthly. (We didn't want the administrative burden of sening out checks for $30 each month - seems like a phenomenal waste of time for all involved.) Let me know if you would like to talk more about the product or Sage CRM in general. 90% of our business comes from working with other partners to help them with Sage CRM for their MAS (or Accpac) install base.

PS. Thanks to the one and only, fabulous and amazing @JeffSchwenk for bringing this to my attention!

Unlike @LouisAraiza with his virtual beers, I prefer cold hard cash.................... I am still waiting on my autographed copy of ""The Book""!

Peter, I would be very happy to help with a MAS product. Having a module like this would make it easier to get the controller on board with the overall CRM concept. BTW, I still have my Beta Testing Excellence certificates presented by Erika J at earlier Incites. One year, I even got a picture with George R. at the Beta tester luncheon.

@ShawnSlavin - this is an extremly late response - but here are some responses to your questions above: 1)What version; Standard or Enterprise? Enterprise 2) On-premesis or hosted? Hosted 3) Why not just track activity in notes on the invoice? It is a convenient tool to have all of your collection information in one area. After you have setup your company collections parameters, the system will auto-process alerts to notify you what clients are past due what the next steps are, based on your policies. It allows you to create multiple templates that will auto-generate custom documents; we have a statement, open invoices, as well as three versions of customized collection letters. You are also able to send emails directly to clients, as well as track notes during each step of the process (i.e. calls, emails, disputes, etc). 4) Is it worth $2,000 per user? Yes we only have one user actively using this tool, so the cost is minimal in that respect compared to what we get out of it. 5) Most important - would you recommend it to a friend? Yes although our collections are not too ellaborate, it is a tool that helps to simply our process and allows us to better streamline our AR. Being able to have all of our invoice notes in one location, the auto-processing and reminders of next steps, as well as the auto-generation of custom documents that can be easily emailed to our client has been a great addition to our software and is why we would recommend Anytime Collect.

@Jennifer Christon thanks for your input. We have a proposal with three different options. Still waiting.