Client Contact

Collect! enables you to schedule contacts for your Clients. All the processing features available in Collect! for Debtor accounts are available for Clients. You can manage your Client accounts with a work queue, automatically schedule timely reminders and updates, and free up your valuable time for other projects while Collect! keeps track of your important business engagements.

• Schedule Client reviews, phone calls and letters.
• Batch process Client contacts using all the batch processes you have always used in Collect! for your Debtor accounts.
• Run contact plans on Client accounts.
• And much, much more!

Integrated Client Management is ideal for managing communication with your clients, scheduling return phone calls and follow-ups as needed.

The Client Contact form is used to define contacts and other actions scheduled to occur on specific dates. Several different types of contacts may be scheduled. The Client Contact form displays fields and pick lists for all the possible settings that you can choose.

Client Contact form

When you are working your WIP list, Client Contacts will be displayed along with any other current Debtor Contacts. When you select a Client Contact, you will be taken to the Client form. The current contact will be highlighted in the list of Client Contacts.

Accessing Client Contact

To access the Client Contact form. select the Contact tab when you are viewing the Client form. This tab is visible only if you have Client Management enabled in your Collect! license.

The Client Management module is included in every Collect! 11.4.3 system, and newer, and upon request for older Version 11 systems.

Type

The Type field sets the type of contact that you are scheduling. Press F2 or select the down arrow to view the list of contact types that you can choose.

The Type of contact determines a general action. For instance, Letter means print a letter, while Review means schedule a Review on the account. Other settings on the Contact form define the details, such as which letter to print, or a Description for the Review. The use of the Description field changes depending on the Type you select in the Type field.

Types Of Contacts

When you choose a Contact Type, other fields on the Contact form change according to the Type you select.

The following is a list of predefined Contact Types with details of how your choice of Type affects the Contact form and the way Collect! handles the contact.

COMMISSION

The Commission Contact sets a commission rate in the Client Settings. This rate applies on a go forward basis for all new accounts entered for this Client. In the Description field, enter the percentage as a number. For example, 33 means 33% and 12.5 means 12.5%.

LETTER

The Letter Contact schedules a letter to be queued for printing in your daily batch. Press F2 on the Description field to view the list of all letters and reports in your system. Select the letter to be printed.

When your daily letter batch runs, Collect! uses the Description field of each Letter contact to locate the letter to print. Please be aware that changing the name of a letter may result in Collect! not being able to process a Letter contact when the batch is run.

When you print a Client letter, Collect! will attach a Metafile to the Letter Contact, just as it does when you print from a Debtor.

Client Contact with Metafile

If the Client Settings have disabled metafiles, then Collect! will not save the metafile.

NOTE

The Note Contact writes one line of notes into the Client notes. In the Description field, enter the text you want written into the Client's notes. Open a new attachment file if you want to include more text.

If an asterisk [*] is the first character in the Description, an asterisk will be placed at the beginning of the note line causing it to be at the top of the Notes.

OPERATOR

The Operator Contact sets the operator in the Client Settings field labeled 'Assign operator ID to accounts'. This Operator ID will be assigned to all new accounts entered for this Client on a go forward basis. The Collector field holds the Operator ID to be set in the Client Settings when this Operator contact is processed.

OTHER

For general use, write a note in the Description field.

PHONE

The Phone Contact schedule a phone call to the debtor. A drop-down list arrow appears in the Description field allowing you to choose from available phone locations for this Client. When you choose Dial A Number from the Tools Menu, Collect! reads the Phone contact's Description field and the phone number is displayed automatically.

This number will be dialed automatically when you enter this Contact when working your WIP (if you have the Auto Dialer option).

You can also manually type in a phone number if you want, or you can even type in text if you want. The Description field will hold up to 79 characters.

PLAN

The Plan Contact runs a contact plan. This is useful for scheduling a contact plan to run at some future date. Press F2 on the Description field to select a Contact Plan to run.

RATE PLAN

The Rate Plan Contact sets a Commission Rate Plan in the Client Settings. This rate plan applies on a go forward basis for all new accounts entered for this Client. Press F2 in the Description field to choose a commission rate plan ID.

REVIEW

The Review Contact schedules a review of the file. Enter a Description which will appear with this contact in the Operator's WIP list. Open an new attachment to add more information.

SALES

The Sales Contact sets the operator in the Client Settings field labeled 'Assign sales ID to new accounts'. This operator ID will be assigned as the Sales ID for any new accounts entered for this Client on a go forward basis. The Collector field holds the Sales ID to be set in the Client Settings when this Sales contact is processed.

The Sales Contact changes the Sales Team ID assigned to new debtors entered in your system. Select the Sales ID from the pick list in the Collector field.

Client

This is the Client whose account is being worked. You may want to send a letter to this Client, make a phone call, write a note or several other actions.

Due Date

This is the Date the contact is due, the scheduled date for the contact activity. The Due Date determines when this contact shows up in an operator's WIP List. For batch processing, the Due Date is the date that the contact will be processed.

Time

This is the scheduled Time for the contact activity in 24 hour format. In other words, if you type 4 it's 4 AM. Type 16 for 4 PM, 18 for 6 PM and so on.

You can set the time to the minute. For example, you could type 16:25 and the call will pop up at 4:25 PM.

It is not compulsory to enter a time. Timed contacts are important when you must deal with a Client at a specific time. (Perhaps he is only home at 7 PM to answer calls.) Then you would enter 19:00 in the time field of the contact and it will pop up on your screen at that time.

If you do not need a time prompt for this account, it is recommended that you leave the time field blank.

Repeat

The Repeat field allows you to automatically forward the date of a contact. This function is activated when you batch process your automatic contacts.

Press F2 from the Repeat field to select a repeat period. When a repeat period is selected, other fields become visible.

When this field is set to Custom, the Number of Days field becomes visible.

Max Intervals

This field is visible when you select a REPEAT value. Collect! uses it to determine how many times this Contact is repeated. This field is hidden when the Contact Type is "Promise" because Promises have their own functionality in regards to repeating intervals.

Priority

The Priority field allows you to enter a priority for this Contact. Priority may be used to organize your WIP list, or to alert an operator to the importance of a particular contact. In the WIP list you can easily display contacts in order of priority.

Priority levels in the WIP list are as follows.

66 to 99 High
34 to 65 Medium
1 to 33 Low

Class

The Class field is for your own use. You can use it to further categorize a particular type of contact. Then a report can be made to retrieve data or write back to the account based on the Class field.

Amount

The Amount field is used to store a dollar amount. You can use it for any purpose. However, for certain types of contacts, it has a special purpose.

Number Of Days

The Number of Days field holds the custom number of days the Contact is forwarded when it is processed.

This field is only displayed when the Repeat field is set to "Custom."

Description

The Description field defines the details of the Contact. The functionality of the Description field changes depending on the Type of Contact that is scheduled. For example, if you schedule a Letter, the Description field becomes a pick list where you can choose the letter you want printed from the list of all reports in the system. Press F2 from the Description field to display the list. For a Note Contact, you type the actual text that you want written to the Client's Notes into the Description field.

Please refer to each Contact Type for details about what to enter in the Description field for that type of Contact.

Attachment

The Attachment field is typically used for information related only to this particular contact. This information is stored in a file 'attached' to the contact. This field will display the attachment filename if you have created an attachment for this contact. It will remain empty if there is no attachment for this contact.

The contact Attachment is a very efficient way of passing messages around your office, or tracking details of specific activity occurring on an account. Adding information as an Attachment to a contact keeps the information "private." (Perhaps you don't want to put it in the Debtor's notes because it is not globally useful.)

To the right of this field, there are four buttons. Use these buttons to perform the following actions.

- OPEN or create an attachment
- PRINT an existing attachment's contents
- DELETE an existing attachment
- SELECT an existing file from the debtor's attachment folder

Please see CONTACT ATTACHMENT FIELD below for details.

Defaults

Select the 'Defaults' button to open the WIP Options form where you can change the settings for the default behavior of your Work In Progress.

Collector

This is the Operator ID assigned to this Contact. The contact will show up in this operator's WIP List on the contact's Date Due. Usually this is the Operator assigned to the Debtor, but could include supervisory personnel to review files, or other members of your team.

Assigned By

This is the operator who sent you the contact. This would ordinarily be the same as the Originator. However, when the contact has been forwarded, this could be a different operator.

Originator

This is the operator who created the contact.

Done By

This is the operator who completed the contact. This is a useful field to note if you need to track account activity. It tells you who worked the contact and marked it done. This field is visible only when a contact is marked "Completed."

Created Date

This is the date the contact was created.

Created Time

This is the time the contact was created.

Done Date

This is the date the contact was done. This field is only visible when a contact is marked "Completed."

Done Time

This is the time the contact was done. This field is only visible when a contact is marked "Completed."

In Progress

A mark in the radio button beside this field means that the contact has not been done. The contact will be loaded into your WIP list until the contact is marked completed.

For example, if it's a Phone Contact, the call hasn't been made yet, and the contact will show up in the operator's WIP List. If it's a Review, the file hasn't been reviewed.

Select this field, or press Spacebar on it, to turn this switch ON.

Completed

A mark in the radio button beside this field means that the contact has been completed. The contact will no longer show up in any WIP list or be processed in any other way.

When the Completed field is selected, several other fields appear on the Contact form, to date and time stamp when the contact was done. Also, the Done By field appears, displaying the ID of the operator who completed the contact.

Do Not Autodelete

Switch this ON to prevent autodeletion of this contact. This is useful for overriding events in contact plans that delete pending contacts. There may be cases where you do not want pending contacts to be deleted when a contact plan is run.

To switch this ON, select the check box next to this field to place a check mark in it.

No Autocomplete

In WIP Options, the setting 'Automatically mark contacts done' can be set so that Collect! marks contacts as Done when they are worked from the WIP List. To override this global setting for this particular contact, switch ON 'No Autocomplete' .

To switch this ON, select the check box next to this field to place a check mark in it.

Elapsed

This is the amount of time that you have spent on the contact. You can enter an amount in hh:mm:ss time format (for example, 00:01:53 is 1 minute and 53 seconds.) Or, Collect! can enter a value automatically.

To automatically keep track of time spent on a contact, switch ON 'Enable elapsed time counter' in the WIP Options form.

*** IMPORTANT*** Time tracking is recorded only when contacts are worked from the WIP List.

Reply

You can construct a reply to a contact and select the Reply button to send it back to the operator in the Assigned By field.

Delete

This button is visible only on the list of all contacts. Select it to delete the highlighted contact from the database.

Edit

This button is visible only on the list of all contacts. Select it to open and edit the highlighted contact.

New

Select this button to save any changes you may have made to this contact and then create a new blank contact for you to fill out.

Help

Select this button for help on the Client Contact form and links to related topics.

Cancel

Select this button to ignore any changes you may have made to this contact and return to the previous form.

OK

Select this button to save any changes you have made to this contact and return to the previous form.

<<

Select this button to view the previous contact in the list.

>>

Select this button to view the next contact in the list.

Contact Attachment Field

As described above, to the right of the Attachment field there are four buttons to Create, Print, Delete or Select a file. These four processes are detailed below.

OPEN OR CREATE AN ATTACHMENT

To create an attachment, select the Open button and the Text Editor screen will appear. Enter text as needed, and then press F8 to save and exit.

If there is already a filename displayed in the Attachment field, select the Open button to open the file for viewing or modification.

The Text Editor conforms to standard command sets that include arrows for movements, shift arrows for selection, and Ctrl Home or Ctrl End for rapid movements on a line. Full mouse support is available. The Windows clipboard is accessible when using Cut/ Copy/ Paste in the editor.

PRINT AN ATTACHMENT

If there is a filename displayed in the Attachment field, you can select the Print button to print the attachment's contents.

DELETE AN ATTACHMENT

If there is a filename displayed in the Attachment field, you can select the Delete button with the stylized X on it to delete the file from the database. This prompts you to delete the file.

ATTACH EXISTING FILE

To attach an existing file to this contact, select the Magnifying Glass button. This feature lets you attach any kind of file to your accounts in Collect! without opening it. As long as Windows is set up to handle that file type, you can instantly display or print any type of original information about any account.

You can print Contact attachments in reports and letters using the @File command in your report templates. However, the attachment file can ONLY be a text file.

If you put a URL in this field, Collect! will use your web browser to go to the web site when you select the OPEN button.

Importing Client Contacts

With Collect! Version 11.4.3 and newer, you can import and export Client Notes, Client Attachments, Client Contacts and Payments. This requires that you are licensed for Collect!'s optional Import/Export module.

Sample import maps are shipped with Collect! and are available for download from the Collect! Member Center widgets area.

Collect! Member Center Widgets

See Also

- Client Settings
- Batch Processing