How can Automations help manage collections?

Required Permissions: Receivables > Set up and manage invoice workflows, automations

Create Automations

Navigate to Automations: Settings > Receivables > Automations  

Automation Design

At a high level, automation consists of an event, conditions, and a resulting action. The event triggers the action only when all conditions are satisfied.

• Events: The event triggers the action.
  • Mandatory: Each automation must include one (and only one) event and at least one action.
  • Event Types: Automations are triggered based on either Invoice Level or Customer Level elements.
• Conditions: Conditions act as pre-qualifiers for actions.
  • Optional: Automations do not have to include conditions. 
  • Why use conditions?: An event will only trigger the defined action when all specified conditions are met.
  • Limitations:
    • Maximum Conditions: 10 conditions per automation
    • Minimum Conditions: 0
  • Invoice Automations: Can have both Invoice and Customer conditions.
  • Customer Automations: Can only have Customer conditions.
• Actions:
  • Types: Customer emails, internal emails, and tasks (all default and created tasks are available).
    • Customer Email: Comma-separated emails (up to 15) and roles (up to 15 recipients).
    • Internal Email: Comma-separated emails (up to 15) and users (up to 15 recipients).

• • Limitations: Maximum Actions: 5 actions per automation.
  • Action Alignment:
    • Invoice Level Event: Triggers Invoice Level actions.
    • Customer Level Event: Triggers Customer Level actions.
  • Hierarchy: For child customers, bill-to contacts will receive communications as usual.

Automation Structure

The structure of Events and Conditions is similar. They include an element, a direction and the specific value(s). 

Elements can be:

• Customer elements:
  • Numerical:
    • Outstanding, Overdue, and Overdue %
    • Consolidated Outstanding, Overdue, and Overdue %: “Consolidated” refers to customers with a hierarchy structure. When using the consolidated value, Centime will look at the customer and all children, for which it is the billing entity
  • Fields: Custom and standard fields of type List and Text  
• Invoice elements: 
  • Numerical: Invoice days past due, Invoice status 
  • Fields: Custom and standard fields of type List and Text  

Direction:

• Event directions:
  • Numerical:
    • Goes beyond
    • drops below
  • Fields:
    • Changes to any of
    • Changes to none of 
• Condition directions:
  • Numerical:
    • More than or equal to
    • Lower than
  • Fields:
    • In list: This includes invoices from being included in the action 
    • Not in list: This excludes invoices from being included in the action 

Example

Stella wants to call customers when an invoice of at least $1,000 is 30 days overdue. 

• Event: An invoice is more than 30 days overdue.
• Condition: The invoice is over $1,000
• Action: Assign a task to Stella 

Additional Features

• Copying Automations and Workflows: The ability to copy both automations and workflows is available for ease of management.
• History Tracking: Automation-triggered emails and tasks, including event details and actions taken, will be recorded in the customer or invoice history.

Managing Automations 

• Creation and Updates: Automations can only be created and managed from this tab. Updates made here will be reflected across all associated workflows.
• Viewing Automations: Automations will appear in the workflow tab’s side panel but will not be editable there.
• Deletion: Deleting an automation from the Automations tab will remove it from all workflows to which it has been added.

Enable Automations with Workflows

• Navigation: Settings > Receivables > Workflows > Customer Segment Workflows > Select the workflow you would like to update 

• Select Automations:

  • Under the "Payment Reminder Campaign" section in the workflows tab, select specific automations to add to a workflow.

  • Automations can be added to any campaign type: Invoice Level, Customer Level, or None.

  • Adding automation is optional.

  • Limit: Up to 100 automations can be enabled per workflow.

If a default workflow is defined, its automations will apply to all newly configured customers.

Conclusion

Automating escalation actions in Centime enhances operational efficiency by triggering timely responses based on specific events and conditions.