When companies conduct business with other companies, clients, customers, and suppliers, they usually do it on credit which means the buyer receives the order on time but pays the supplier later either in full or small installments. When a company wants to see how much money the clients and customers owe to it, the accounts department conducts payment inquiries. In the payment inquiry, the accountants analyze the unpaid invoices and follow up with the clients who didn’t pay and ask them about the reasons for not paying until now.
Brief Description of Payment Inquiry Form:
It is very common these days that most companies do business and make deals with clients and customers on credit. Although it is better to do business in cash there are some reasons why a client or customer can’t pay in cash i.e. he has to receive cash from his clients and then he can pay his supplier etc. In this situation when many clients owe money or payments to a company, it is the responsibility of the company and its accounts department to evaluate the unpaid invoices and find out why the clients and customers haven’t paid the invoices yet. This is also very important to evaluate if a client is going to pay his invoices or if the company has to mark his invoices as bad invoices or forgotten invoices. After evaluating the unpaid invoices and conducting inquiries with the debtors, the accounts department prepares a report in which all the unpaid invoices and their statuses are included.
Key elements to include in the Payment Inquiry:
- Name of the debtor i.e. client who hasn’t paid his invoice yet with complete address
- Date when the inquiry was made with the client
- Details of the invoice(s) that the client hasn’t paid yet
- The reasons explained by the client for not paying his invoices
- Details of the payment i.e. specific time frame in which the client has agreed to pay
- Precise statement of bad invoice in case the client won’t be able to pay the invoice ever
- Signature of the head or manager of the accounts department
The most common reasons why people don’t pay their invoices on time:
- The customer haven’t paid the client yet so he can’t pay his supplier either:
When payment inquiries are made, most of the clients or debtors explain that they can’t pay their invoices until their clients and customers pay them. This means once the debtor receives money from his clients, he will pay to his creditor. - The customer is not paying the invoice due to a dispute:
There is a dispute that the customer is dealing with and until the dispute is resolved, the customer is not going to pay the invoice. - The customer didn’t receive the invoice or any reminder:
This is also a very common reason that the customer hasn’t received the invoice or any reminder from the creditor about a late payment. - The client died before paying the invoice:
This is a case in which the client dies before paying his invoices and if there is no one else to take his place, the creditor can’t receive the cash.
Here is a preview of a Free Sample Payment Inquiry Form created as a fillable PDF Form,
Here is the download link for this Payment Inquiry Form,