First Party Collections Information Important To Your Business' Cash Flow
The name "first party collections" means that the entity collecting (or an affiliate was a party to the original transaction. The debtor is referred to as "second party," and "third party" means another entity that gets involved in the attempts at collection, like a debt collection agency.
First party collections are most common early in the debt collection cycle. As soon as your regular accounts receivable staff become aware that a bill is past due, they can pass it on to first party collections without a time lag. First party collections people are often more cognizant of the need to attempt to keep on good terms with the debtor in order to get more potential business in the future.
Often the debtor will be more inclined to try to please their original creditor, especially if you have a product or service that he or she needs in order to maintain their business. Sometimes a gentle reminder that you won't ship any more items until their past due amount is cleared up is enough to get recalcitrant debtors to pay.
Another advantage first party collections has is one that surprises most people-under first party collections you are not subject to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Whether you're the original lender or a subsidiary of it (some large companies operate their own collections agencies as subsidiaries for just this reason), you're not considered a collector by law, which adds some flexibility to your debt collection. However, you must still abide by applicable state and federal laws.
Most companies handle their own collections for a period of ninety days to six months. Ideally, when the 2-3 month mark comes up and collections efforts aren't working, it's common practice for companies to turn over these accounts to a third party agency or "sell" the debt to them, which means the agency pays for the right to keep whatever return they get on the debt.
In addition, first party collections aren't very effective unless you have a specialized collections staff. Your sales force, accounting staff or management are not trained collections people and their time is better spent elsewhere while you save collections endeavors for people who know how to perform them.
First party collections done by a dedicated staff is just a more efficient way of handling it. They can take continuing education on collections techniques and perform more collections tasks such as finding people using private investigation, working out creative payment arrangements or disguising collections as audits. First party collections that are operated like third party collections agencies are the most successful.
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