Under the condition of market economy, with the fierce competition, enterprises often need to provide credit services to customers in order to stabilize sales channels, expand product sales, reduce inventory and increase income, which leads to the emergence of accounts receivable. The formation of accounts receivable increases the business risk of enterprises and affects the working capital turnover and economic benefits of enterprises. Therefore, how to monitor the generation of accounts receivable and how to deal with accounts receivable has become an unavoidable major issue in enterprise management in China. The following briefly discusses the causes of accounts receivable, its impact on enterprises and the countermeasures to strengthen the management of accounts receivable from three aspects.

First, the causes of accounts receivable

Accounts receivable are the money that an enterprise should collect from the buyer, the unit or individual who receives labor services for selling products, materials and providing labor services. According to the statistical analysis of professional organizations, in the developed market economy, the total overdue accounts receivable of enterprises are generally not higher than 10%, while in China, the proportion is as high as 60% or more. So, why is this happening? The following is a simple analysis from two aspects:

(A) the impact of the business environment

With the increasingly fierce market competition, enterprises, as a part of the market, often use credit sales to expand their market share in order to survive in the competition. Especially in the case of weak market, tight money supply and lack of funds, credit sale has obvious promotion effect, which is more important for enterprises to sell new products and open up new markets. Driven by this sales strategy, the accounts receivable of enterprises are increasing, and the business risks are increasing day by day.

(B) the enterprise's own problems

In China, enterprise managers generally only pay attention to sales and ignore internal management including accounts receivable management, thinking that only by increasing sales can they win more profits for enterprises, but they lack experience and theory in accounts receivable management. Generally, there are the following situations:

First, the internal control system is not perfect and the management responsibilities are not clear. The weak basic management of enterprises and the imperfect custody of economic contracts and related files are one of the major defects in accounts receivable management.

Second, the index system is unscientific. When setting assessment indicators, enterprises often overemphasize indicators such as output value, income and profit, but fail to assess the return of accounts receivable and the situation of funds occupied by inventory, which leads operators to blindly pursue output value, income and profit, but accounts receivable are ignored.

Third, there is a lack of due risk awareness. When establishing credit relationship, enterprises often ignore the investigation and understanding of customers' credit status, and blindly pursue market share in the way of delivering goods first and collecting money later in business dealings, which brings risks to the occurrence and recovery of accounts receivable.

Fourth, the daily management work is not in place, the means of clearing debts are single, there are not many methods and the intensity is not enough. First of all, there is no regular reconciliation, which leads to the interruption of prescription; Secondly, finance, auditing, supervision and other departments failed to perform their supervision and management functions well; Finally, the person in charge has a weak sense of responsibility, and the collection and recycling is none of his business, resulting in high accounts receivable of enterprises.

Second, the impact of accounts receivable on enterprises

(A) High accounts receivable directly affect the cash flow of enterprises, which in turn leads to financial crisis.

Enterprises continue to expand sales through credit sales. With the increase of sales, accounts receivable are expanding. The increase of accounts receivable directly affects the short-term solvency and cash flow of enterprises. A large number of accounts receivable not only weaken the short-term solvency of enterprises, but also directly affect the payment ability, solvency and turnover ability of enterprises with the decrease of cash flow, which makes some units have good profitability, but they have profits, no funds, good book status and lack of funds, which leads to financial crisis.

(B) The impact of bad debt risk of accounts receivable on corporate profitability

If the amount of accounts receivable of an enterprise is too large, its profits will include a large number of accounts receivable, especially the harm of overdue accounts receivable to the enterprise is directly reflected in the risk of bad debts, resulting in the profit risk of the enterprise. In China, especially in state-owned enterprises, it is common that bad debts have actually become bad debts but have not been dealt with.

In view of the various causes of the above-mentioned accounts receivable and their impact on the operation of enterprises, I think that the excessive accumulation of accounts receivable will seriously affect the financial situation and normal operation of the unit, and simple collection control afterwards is far from solving the problem. The management of accounts receivable should be controlled from the source, focusing on pre-control.

Third, measures to strengthen the management of accounts receivable

(A) the implementation of planned management and dynamic management of accounts receivable.

The planned management of accounts receivable is helpful to gradually recover accounts receivable according to the expected goals of enterprises, thus reducing accounts receivable and increasing cash flow of enterprises. Therefore, when the enterprise issues the annual budget every year, it sets a relatively positive plan number for the year-end balance and payback period of accounts receivable, so that the sales strategy and recovery strategy of the enterprise are carried out around this plan number, that is, when the products sell well, the scale of credit sales is tight; When the product is weak, be lenient; When funds are tight, be strict; When the scale of credit sales approaches the warning line, decisive measures should be taken to suspend the credit sales business.

Dynamic management of accounts receivable is a method for enterprises to grasp the situation of accounts receivable at any time, queue up, analyze and manage the customers in arrears, the amount in arrears and the overdue time on a regular basis according to the length of accounts receivable, so as to adjust the collection strategy and scheme in time and reduce the loss of bad debts. Through hierarchical management, it is helpful to clearly understand the real-time situation of each account receivable, make management more targeted and effectively control the amount of accounts receivable.

(2) Provision for bad debts shall be made according to the prescribed proportion.

Under the condition of market economy, there is a risk of bad debts when enterprises sell goods on credit in their business dealings. In order to reduce the risk of bad debts to the maximum extent and avoid the difficulties caused to the production, operation and financial revenue and expenditure of enterprises when bad debts occur, it is necessary to withdraw bad debt reserves in advance according to the prescribed proportion, and then write off the withdrawn bad debt reserves when bad debts actually occur. There are generally three ways to withdraw bad debt reserve:

1. aging analysis method. Aging analysis is a method to estimate the bad debt loss in stages according to the length of arrears of accounts receivable. Through this method, enterprises can be urged to take effective and positive measures.

2. Accounts receivable. Balance percentage method. According to China's current financial accounting system, the provision for bad debts can be accrued at 3‰~ 5‰ of the year-end balance of accounts receivable.

Under this method, the balance of bad debt reserve at the end of each year matches the balance of accounts receivable, and a certain accrual ratio is maintained, and its net amount is included in the total assets in the balance sheet, which avoids the inflated assets and conforms to the principle of prudence.

3. Credit percentage method. The percentage method of credit sales means that the generation of bad debt loss is directly related to credit sales, and the estimation of bad debt loss should be calculated by multiplying the net value of credit sales by a certain proportion. The percentage method of credit sales is based on net credit sales, reflecting the figures of a period, and the estimated bad debt loss calculated on this basis is also the number of periods, that is, the amount of bad debt reserve that should be accrued in the current period.

Enterprises should choose their own method of bad debt provision according to their own actual situation, so as to lay an economic foundation for the smooth development of enterprises in the future.

(three) the implementation of the responsibility management of accounts receivable, give play to the supervision function of accounting, and ensure that every account receivable is responsible.

In the management of accounts receivable, the "recovery rate of accounts receivable" is directly linked to the salary income of employees and the management contract assessment of the unit, and responsibility management is implemented to establish a high awareness. The financial department and the marketing department jointly complete the management of accounts receivable, give full play to the supervision function of enterprise accounting, and assist in the recovery of accounts receivable, thus forming a clear relationship between rights and responsibilities.

Establish an account receivable suspense approval system, implement the method of "who approves, who is responsible", and clarify the responsible person of each account receivable business. Each unit can give different levels of personnel different amounts of approval authority according to its own characteristics and management. Beyond the examination and approval authority, must be approved by the leadership at the next higher level. If the amount is especially huge, it must be reported to the top leader of the enterprise for approval.

Establish marketing responsibility system, introduce incentive mechanism and implement reward and punishment measures. Enterprises can take the repayment of arrears as the main basis for evaluating the performance of marketing departments and marketers, establish an index evaluation system, and link it with the economic benefits of marketers according to the completion of indicators, so as to fully mobilize their enthusiasm and accelerate the recovery of accounts receivable.

(four) to evaluate the credit of customers and determine the scale of credit sales.

Introduce customer credit management mechanism, and conduct in-depth field investigation on assets, financial status, operating ability, past business records, corporate reputation, etc. For customers who intend to sell on credit, the credit rating is evaluated according to the survey results, and the credit rating file of customers who sell on credit is established. At the same time, according to the different credit ratings of different users, combined with product market share, market demand and trend changes, the sales policy of each customer is reasonably determined. For customers with poor credit standing, cash transactions are adopted, for customers with average or good credit standing, acceptance bills are adopted when cash is not accepted, and for customers with good credit standing, installment payment is adopted, but the term and accumulated amount should be specified.

(v) Implement a proactive risk transfer mechanism.

For some irrecoverable accounts, risk transfer can be implemented: firstly, asset liquidity transfer can be adopted, that is, accounts receivable can be converted into bills receivable with stronger liquidity and creditor's rights to prevent bad debt losses to some extent; Secondly, the object of transfer, with part or all of its accounts receivable as collateral, borrows money from financial institutions within a specified period of time, or sells all accounts receivable to financial institutions, thus transferring part or all of the risks existing in the recovery of accounts receivable to financial institutions; Finally, we can also implement directional transfer. When it is found that accounts receivable are difficult to recover, we can use them flexibly and buy back the assets we need from customers to offset this part of accounts receivable, that is, enterprises can regard this part of accounts receivable as the money paid in advance to customers to buy assets, thus realizing the directional transfer of accounts receivable. In this way, the accounts receivable that cannot be recovered or have little hope of recovery are effectively transferred, thus avoiding the financial crisis and business crisis of the enterprise.

To sum up, business operators, through the correct and scientific analysis of accounts receivable, take all active and feasible strategies to strengthen the management of accounts receivable and gradually reduce the accounts receivable of enterprises, with a view to accelerating the turnover rate of accounts receivable, increasing cash flow, reducing bad debt losses and laying a good economic foundation for the future development of enterprises.