Diane Perkins

Diane Perkins is a Collections Analyst in the Chandler, AZ office. She joined Valin with the Sun Automation acquisition in 2021. As the result of a peer’s medical leave, Diane was assigned the task of applying cash to two of Valin’s largest OEM customers. This was in addition to her existing accounts.

When Diane took over the first account, 40% of the open invoices were over 60 days old or “way past due”. Currently, 4% of invoices fall into that category. Another way to view this is cash flow. A total of 46% of the total dollars this customer owed Valin were more than 60 days old when Diane took over. Currently, that number stands at 2%.

While using an automation tool designed to assist with cash applications helped, the biggest gain was achieved when Diane began communicating with the customer service staff when there was an issue with applying cash. If a payment did not match to the penny, Diane determined why and communicated the reason to customer service so the resolution process could start.

The second customer has unique issues as well. First, they took credits against open invoices even if the RMA had not been processed completely in the Valin system. This process caused numerous invoices to have cash applied incorrectly. Thus, Diane designed a P21 process that allowed cash to be applied correctly while also keeping track of credits the customer had taken.

Another issue with processing payments for this large OEM customer was that Valin had a hole in the way orders were handled. Products were shipped to the customer but not always processed in our system. The customer would receive the product in their system and issue payment. If the order was not invoiced in our system, accounts receivable had no invoice to apply cash against. In the past, the cash would sit on the account waiting for the order to get processed which, in some cases, never happened. Today, if Diane cannot locate an invoice to apply the cash against, she works with customer service to resolve the issue.

Diane’s proactive approach to communicating issues, and her willingness to adopt automation has enabled Valin to keep accounts receivable records for the two largest OEM customers clean and cash flowing.