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What Is MoneyQuest?
The MoneyQuest Corporation is a financial services company engaged in what we term "interface management", by which we make it possible for businesses of every kind to access necessary accounts receivable services more efficiently, and at a dramatically lower cost than previously available to them.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the primary industry of America has become information, and those companies devoted to the acquisition, formatting, management and transmission of information - Microsoft, Intel, AOL-Time Warner, Oracle, IBM, Cisco, via the Internet - are in the ascendancy.
In this new and challenging business environment, there is a great and increasing need for systems management, and particularly for the combination of needed services with electronic data interchange. As their ability to transmit data is augmented, companies and professionals are increasingly choosing to outsource business functions. The new MoneyQuest Account Recovery System, which we call MaxCollect, provides creditor companies with a unique and highly effective electronic solution to the constant and increasing problem of slow pay or delinquent accounts.
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What Is Your Business Objective?
Operating as a client service bureau, our business objective is to become the leading Accounts Receivable (A/R) services provider in the nation. With top quality, flexible, and innovative products, MoneyQuest provides an extremely valuable commodity - INCREASED CASH FLOW. MoneyQuest empowers creditors to convert their open accounts into cash by utilizing highly disciplined and flexible recovery processes with the latest technology in computers and proprietary software.
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How Does MoneyQuest Increase Cash Flow?
Simply stated, MoneyQuest fills a void in the A/R marketplace created by two mature industries, which attempt to help creditors but fall short. Billing software and/or billing companies are extremely good at creating an itemized bill initially and keeping track of what is outstanding.
When accounts age to the point where, for the most part, they are uncollectible, providers place them with collection agencies (the second industry) with the hope that they will recover some money. Generally, agencies produce poor results and charge too much for those unacceptable results. The gap between these two options creates a huge hole, which is rarely addressed. MoneyQuest, utilized in the time frame between 60 days (the billing) and 180 days (the agency) fills this gap, dramatically accelerating cash flow.
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How is MoneyQuest better than a collection agency?
MoneyQuest's core business addresses that time frame between the third or fourth bill and the placing of that uncollected bill with an agency.MoneyQuest has created a process, and the systems to drive it, which attacks the root causes of the devaluation of receivables. Research shows there are two main factors which inhibit the conversion of receivables into cash:
- The single most important factor is age. Accounts deteriorate in collectability at an average rate of 10% per month, bad checks at a rate of 25% per month.
- The second factor is the priority debtors place upon the payment of the bill. The lower the priority the lower the commitment to pay.
So recovery is a psychological process wherein the age of the account is inversely proportional to the commitment to pay it -- the greater the age, the lower the commitment, and the less likely anyone will collect it. Creditors cannot just hope that their debtors are going to pay. What works is timely and proactive follow-up with sophisticated techniques, which motivate debtors to resolve their outstanding accounts quickly, which largely eliminates the need to employ collection agencies.
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What is the MoneyQuest Process?
In essence, there are six separate methods (in order of importance/results) by which any creditor can collect their accounts.
- Initially, sending a bill, invoice or statement.
- Sending internal collection letters
- Making collection telephone calls
- Using a third party such as an attorney or collection agency
- Reporting to a credit bureau
- Litigation (less than 1% of all external collections result from suit)
For the most part, creditors perform the first process well, the second and third indifferently, and therefore have to use methods four through six quite often. What MoneyQuest has done is put together, for the first time, the last five components of the collection process (2-6 above) into an automated and systematic internal system which businesses can use at an extremely early aging. This allows MoneyQuest to help their clients collect their money faster, cut expenses, and retain satisfied customers, while eliminating the need to employ collection agencies.
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Why would my company need Accounts Receivable Services?
Nearly all businesses, no matter how small or large, are challenged to incorporate computer-based automation systems and professional management practices into their billing and collection process. Experience shows (i.e., payroll, bank data, and credit card processing) that business activity migrates from in-house to vendors who can provide software systems and disciplined administration processes. Businesses are increasingly making the choice of outsourcing office functions as a way to improve their own efficiency.
A survey by D & B illustrates the need for dynamic A/R services. Whether sales volumes are rising, falling or level, those surveyed complained of a "cash flow squeeze", and they in turn are "utilizing more creative delays" in the way they pay their bills. This means mounting debt and added aging of receivables.
The size of this debt is enormous. In 1996, according to the NY Times, creditors wrote-off over $100 billion of consumer debt (there were no figures for commercial debt) which was placed with agencies, representing over 250 million accounts, and more than 575 million bad checks were written. To conservatively gauge the entire market, the number of accounts placed with agencies can easily be doubled, since many accounts are still on the books (aging) and many more are never placed with agencies.
In general, companies perform the process of sending bills and statements well, by either utilizing internal software or outsourcing to a billing company. However, once the process has reached an aging of 90 days, accounts are no longer truly receivable; at this point, they are classified as delinquent accounts, with a substantial reduction in potential collectability.
At 90 days in the aging process the creditor should take immediate, proactive action to collect their delinquent accounts by employing the procedures that are most likely to produce results. Unfortunately, it is at this same point that most companies lose control of the process, by simply continuing to send out bills, or attempting to collect internally. Usually internal activities are relatively ineffective, simply because creditors are not very good at it. They lack the tools, experience, time, and often the motivation to perform well in this negative area.
MaxCollect's designed use is in the time frame between the point that the account is clearly delinquent (i.e., unlikely to pay) and the point that, on average, the creditor accepts reality and sends the uncollected account to an agency. Utilized properly, MaxCollect empowers the creditor to: a) recover most of the accounts; b) recover the accounts much faster; and c) do so for a net cost of a few cents on the dollar.
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Why should my company outsource?
Most companies, whatever their area of business, have certain things in common. There are three functions that most of them do not perform internally. - The cleaning of their bathrooms, the removal of their garbage, and the continued effort to collect their delinquent accounts beyond a certain period of time. In this area, the decision to outsource has been made years ago, and the only question is: WHO WILL OBTAIN THE BUSINESS?
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What is the MoneyQuest Pricing Philosophy?
Collection agencies, positioning themselves as the last resort of the creditor, share a common business philosophy: They charge as much as they possibly can. MoneyQuest, in order to establish a profound advantage in the marketplace and - as an inevitable corollary - obtain significant marketplace share, has a contrarian business philosophy: We charge as little as we possibly can. In consequence, we regard the collection agencies as the tillers of the soil from which we reap the harvest, a harvest greatly to the benefit of our clients.
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