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Collections Best Practices
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premises. Also, one must always use either of these package delivery companies
in order to have access to the signature information, when there may be less
expensive shipping options available.
Cost: Installation time:

7–21 E-MAIL INVOICES IN ACROBAT FORMAT

It can be extremely difficult to obtain payment for some invoices. This problem
usually arises when the approval of a specific individual at a customer is required
and that person is either rarely available or so disorganized that the paperwork
invariably disappears. Traditional approaches have been to attempt routing an
invoice around the person in question, repeatedly mailing or faxing copies of it,
or e-mailing reminders at regular intervals. Despite the variety of possible
actions, this can become a frustrating impasse that may take months to resolve.
Of the approaches just noted, the one that works best is a reminder e-mail to
the approving party, because that person can simply forward the e-mail to the
accounting department with a note asking to expedite the payment. However, the
problem with e-mails is that a perfect copy of the invoice cannot be included with
the e-mail message, which could otherwise be forwarded straight to the accounting
department with an approval notation by the approving party. Another problem is
that the approving party may not have seen the invoice, and so may claim that he
or she cannot approve it.
Adobe’s Acrobat software has eliminated these problems by making it possi-
ble to create a perfect copy of an invoice as printed by any accounting system and
to save it into a PDF file that can be attached to an e-mail and forwarded straight
to a customer’s accounting department, where it can be opened, printed, and paid.
By using this approach, one can create a completely electronic methodology for
obtaining approval of invoices by customers.
Implementing the conversion of invoices into the Acrobat format is quite
simple. First go to the Adobe Web site (www.adobe.com) to order the Acrobat
software, and pay $249 either to download it or have a copy shipped to you. Once
received and installed the program, go to your accounting software package and
prepare to print an invoice. When the printing screen appears, change the
assigned printer to the Acrobat Distiller, which will appear as one of the available
printers. The software will ask you where you want to store the resulting file and
what to name it. After a few seconds, the conversion of the invoice into a picture-
perfect PDF file will be complete.
The resulting PDF file can be easily incorporated into an e-mail message as a
file attachment. However, do not assume that the recipient of the message has
Adobe’s Acrobat Reader software available to open and view the invoice file.
Instead, add a line in your e-mail message noting where the recipient can down-
load a free copy of the software. A sample message might read as follows: