Instalments without spreadsheets

Selling a plot is one moment. Collecting for it can take a year. Somewhere in that year, a spreadsheet with one tab per buyer starts to go wrong.

Attach the plan to the booking

When a plot is booked, record the payment plan with it: the booking amount, each instalment with its due date, and any extra charges such as development or registration costs. The total payable is then known from day one.

Receipts update everything

Each payment is entered once, as a receipt against that booking. The buyer's ledger, the amount outstanding and the project's collections all update from that one entry, so nobody has to copy numbers between sheets.

See overdue before it becomes a problem

• A list of buyers with payments past their due date, and by how much.
• Receivables grouped by how late they are: 1 to 30 days, 31 to 60, and beyond.
• Collection efficiency: how much of what was due has actually come in.

A short, polite reminder in the first week of a delay works far better than a difficult call three months later. The point of the numbers is to make that first-week reminder easy.