IDEA: What angered your customer enough to debit your account and short-pay you? Find out ASAP.

When customers are billed by your firm, sometimes they will bill you back for a variety of reasons through debt memos.  Take note of these and find out immediately what caused the buyer to tell their AP department to bill you back (debit your account, reduce their liability to you):

The debit memos stem from events such as these: 

• Errors in billings prices your billings person made not matching the buyer’s PO,
• Shipment quantities do not match buyer’s PO
• Shipment products do not match buyer’s PO
• Products not shipped properly,
• Products shipped late causing fees and overtime,
• Products shipped to the wrong facility (customer had to forward it to the right location),
• Invoice billed freight and PO says freight is included,
• Invoice billed handling charges and other costs not covered in the buyer’s PO,
• Product failures that they experienced since buying this product or service,
• Damaged products dumped off by the freight company you selected to carry your goods,
• Quality problems that have crept up after being sold with your product enough to anger the buyer to react.

These types of problems will normally not return to your QC department since the customer does not ship it back but customer do bill you back for its cost. Customer debit memos (deductions from payments, chargebacks) should be shared not only in accounting and sales immediately but also in production and quality control.