In the collection industry, efficiency is extremely important in making sure that the organization is productive in their collection efforts. There are many ways to achieve increased efficiency. These can be accomplished through the workforce, through business processes, and through advancements in technology. One of the big changes to come to AdvantEdge version 2.0 is the Linking functionality. This feature allows collectors to quickly and easily find and pull up accounts that are related to a specific debtor. In many situations, organizations will have a single debtor with numerous accounts. If these accounts were not all established together, they will sit independently from each other in a collection portfolio. With the Linking feature, accounts with the same debtor can be linked together so that a collector can work numerous accounts for a single debtor at the same time. While many industries see these situations arise, one example of where this can be consistently seen is in the medical industry.  

In the medical industry, it is not uncommon for someone to be admitted to the emergency room, then admitted to the hospital, then scheduled for follow-up visits and appointments. While these may be surrounding one incident, because the individual visits different doctors and locations, they may have numerous billed accounts. If the individual does not pay their invoices and is taken to collections, their accounts will be separate. By linking these together, collectors can prioritize which account should be paid first, highest, etc... The linking functionality can be set up to automatically post payments to specific accounts in the linked group based on specific business rules of the organization. This can be true for many different industries, and because of this, different industries will have a specific set of business rules to follow when collecting on linked accounts.  

Another benefit to linked accounts is the ability to negotiate past due invoices together rather than separately. In most collection departments, there are specific business rules that tell the collector how much they can settle for depending on the financial situation of the debtor. When a collector is not able to see all the accounts attached to a specific debtor, the overall financial state of the debtor is not as accurate. By being able to quickly identify the linked accounts, collectors will be able to reach payment options on the batch of accounts more successfully.  

AdvantEdge has been designed in a way to make it easy to link accounts. The software highlights numerous fields in the collections screen to help the collector identify linked accounts. These accounts can be linked on SSN, name and address, driver's license numbers, accounts numbers, or agency numbers to name a few. Payments can be applied to a lead account in the linked group, or payments can be spread throughout accounts. Please contact ADS to learn more about how AdvantEdge Linking functionality can work for your organization.