Your Accounts Receivable Agent Collects Corporate Folios on Time
The AgentWorks Accounts Receivable Agent takes direct-bill invoicing and collections off your hotel controller and the accounts receivable clerk who works for her. Today corporate direct-bill accounts age because invoices go out late and follow-up depends on who has time, and group master accounts need line-by-line reconciliation before anyone can bill them. The Accounts Receivable Agent sends invoices on schedule to the right billing contact, follows up on every open balance, and flags discrepancies before they reach the client.
What it takes off your plate
Ask a hotel controller about receivables and you hear about timing. Corporate guests check out, their folios move to the city ledger, and the invoice waits until the clerk gets through the week's backlog. By the time it arrives, the client's accounts payable team has closed the month. Follow-up is a phone call when someone remembers.
Group business is harder. The master account for a conference carries room charges, banquet checks, audiovisual fees and incidentals, and the contract says who pays what. Reconciling it line by line takes days, and any error means a disputed invoice and a delayed payment. The cost is cash that sits unpaid, relationships with corporate accounts strained over paperwork, and a controller buried in follow-up instead of analysis.
What the Accounts Receivable Agent does, step by step
The Accounts Receivable Agent starts with the conversations that get invoices paid, then does the ledger work.
- Confirms the billing contact. When a corporate account or group is set up for direct billing, the agent confirms the billing contact, the address for invoices and any purchase order or reference the client needs on the invoice.
- Sends the invoice. After checkout or the group's departure, the agent generates the invoice from the folio data and emails it to the correct billing contact on the schedule you set.
- Follows up on open balances. As an invoice ages, the agent sends courteous reminders to the billing contact, asks whether anything is holding up payment, and resends copies or folio detail on request.
- Handles routine questions. A client asking which charges belong to which guest, or for a copy of a folio, gets an answer with the supporting detail.
- Reconciles group masters. Before a group invoice goes out, the agent checks each charge against the group contract's billing instructions, and flags anything posted to the wrong folio or outside the agreed terms.
- Tracks aging. The agent keeps the city ledger aging current and shows which accounts are drifting past terms.
- Escalates disputes. A disputed charge or an account well past terms goes to the controller, or to the sales manager who owns the relationship, with the invoice and correspondence attached.
Where the work is recorded
Every invoice sent, reminder, question and reply lands on the corporate account's record in the CRM your sales and finance teams already share. When the sales manager calls the client about next year's rate, she can see the account's billing history before she dials.
The financial side lives in the property management system and the accounting system: invoices, city ledger postings, payments applied and the aging report.
What your controller sees the next morning: invoices sent overnight, payments received and applied, reminders already sent on aging balances, group masters reconciled and ready to bill, and a short list of disputes that need her decision.
What your people do instead
With the Accounts Receivable Agent carrying the invoices and the follow-up, your controller spends her time on forecasting, cost control and the ownership report. Your accounts receivable clerk handles the exceptions that need a person, and your sales managers keep their calls with corporate accounts about the relationship, not about an overdue invoice.
Your front desk benefits too: checkout for a direct-bill guest stays quick and gracious, because the billing that follows is handled properly. The guest signs the folio, the company receives a clean invoice a few days later, and nobody has to call anybody to ask where it is.
Corporate accounts begin with a reservation. See how instant inquiry response protects hotel margins and how reservation concierges protect hotel yield.
One next step
The free Hospitality Industry Assessment reviews your back office, reservations and guest services workflows and shows which one an agent should take first. To see the AgentWorks Accounts Receivable Agent with the other agents built for hotels, visit the hospitality industry page.
See where the Accounts Receivable Agent would start in your hospitality business.
I'm Maxwell, the Hospitality ambassador here. The free Industry Assessment reads your website and asks how calls, follow-ups and records happen today, then shows the first workflow worth handing to an agent like this one — and what your team gets back. Leave your email and I'll send the link.
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