new functionality: payments collection

[Gabriel Oberreuter]

Hi all,

I would like to share what we have been doing with ofbiz.

We had an urgent requirement from administration which involved collecting payments from customers. Our company usually sells products/services and ask for the payment 30 days later. So we have this "collection" issue. Normally, with usual customers, this topic is under control, but recently we have seen lots of invoices not being paid.

The causes of this are mainly a lack of (pro)action by our side. In Chile we have migrate to a system were all invoices should be electronic: now Servicios de Impuestos Internos (SII - government tax collector) requires that all Invoices are generated so that a XML representation is send to their servers, and the obligation of companies regarding the exchange of these documents ends with the sending by email of these XML to the other companies. So, if we sell something, we send the XML by email to the customer, and that's it.

With this change lots of companies are having issues adapting to this new way of handling invoices.

Ok, now to the topic:

We were asked to implement a system to manage collections, and as we are in the process of implementing ofbiz, we decided to do it ofbiz way.

Accouting component was extended so now each Invoice has "Collection Actions" (for example, to send the PDF representation of the Invoice to the customer, not only the XML one). Our staff should register all actions excecuted to collect payments:
- calls/emails made to the customer, asking if they got the Invoice
- calls/emais sent to the customer, asking if everything is fine, and that they should pay withing the time accorded
- and so on

The implementation is already in production in beta status, and is proving to be very helpful. We import Invoice data from our existing system, and the staff in charge of collections use Ofbiz to register all the collection actions. They also use the Party component to register all customers contact information.

Has anyone else had this requirement before, or now? For us Collections is a big topic.

Greetings,
Gabriel

[Sharan-F]

Hi Gabriel

Thanks very much for sharing this information with us. We are always looking out to collect OFBiz references and user stories so would you be willing for us to use this as an OFBiz User story ?

Thanks
Sharan

[Gabriel Oberreuter]

Hi Sharan, of course, no problem. We are still developing this functionality, but right now it is already being used and liked by our users.

I would like to point a few thoughts about the erp decition process we went through:
As discussed before in the forums, when deciding which ERP to implement it is important to clear a few points:

- does the solution meets the company requirements, in general terms?
- how many companies are using the solution worldwide? in our country?
- which big companies choose it?
- whats the cost of buying and implementing the solution?
- if the implementation must be done by the company itself, does it have the proper team to do so? is the solution well documented?
- in case of problems or any specific need, is there easy to access teams willing to be paid to get them solved?

I think that, once technical issues are solved (the solution meet technically the requirements), the decision is mostly emotional: the company need to trust that the implementation process will be succesful.

Yesterday I was reading a post about the goals of ofbiz development: should it be to create a product? a better framework? I think that both.

By its very nature, ERP needs customization for each company implementing it: by industry, by country, by specific needs, and so on. So a great framework is a must. But at the same time, as a starting point one needs as a complete product as possible. I think that now Ofbiz kind of meet these. The documentation is a bit unorganized, and the only good way to get to know the system is to play with it, to develop some components, to try and implement some functionality and use it in a daily basis.

Anyway, I am happy that we decided to go with Ofbiz, and so far it has been a great experience. In general terms all the code follows a logic, and by understanding it and learning which patterns the framework uses, it is not that hard.

Just my 2 cents.