Excuses: Your Sales Manager/Salesman/Assistant said...

This can be an excuse to delay payment, but on the other hand in might not be, so the first thing to do is to find out exactly who said what to whom - not least because what any representative of your Company says could bind your Company to abide by that statement.

If it turns out that a representative of your Company has actually agreed to give a customer time to pay without reference to you, then you have several important things to do immediately:

• Go through the usual checks to find out more about the customer's real financial situation.
  
• Get in touch with the customer, and either agree to the arrangement or (better!) try to arrange a more advantageous payment plan.
  
• Put the agreement in writing - and make sure to stress that the arrangement is 'one time only' and does not apply to other contracts.
  
• Decide how much (if any) credit you are prepared to extend to the customer for the foreseeable future.
  
• MAKE SURE THAT THIS SITUATION CANNOT ARISE AGAIN!

This kind of thing tends to happen where there is no formal Credit Policy in place - or where employees have not been made aware of their place in the Credit Policy scheme of things.

Obviously, if you already have a Credit Policy, then your employees need to be made aware of it, and given to understand that they have to abide by its terms.

If you do not have a Credit Policy - you need one! You'll find the basic ingredients of a credit policy at http://www.metlissbarfield.com/systems.htm under the heading 'Essential Points to Cover'. If you have a problem using the 'recipe', please let me know. I'll do what I can to help.