Selling on credit brings customers back, but a debt notebook always ends up costing money. Here is how to structure the follow-up.
In many Cameroonian businesses, credit sales are the norm with regular customers. It builds loyalty, but it also turns your cash into an untracked loan. The notebook shows its limits as soon as customers and amounts multiply: lost pages, crossings-out, disputed debts.
What approximate tracking costs
- A debt forgotten or impossible to prove
- A customer disputing an amount with no history to settle it
- Credit extended to someone who already owes too much
- Cash whose real level you no longer know
One account per customer
Each customer has a record: contact details, credit purchases, payments, up-to-date balance. The amount owed is visible as soon as the account opens, with a button to record a payment. Customers with an outstanding debt are flagged in the list.
Part payments and history
A customer rarely pays in one go. The software should accept a part payment, attach it to the account and keep the history: who bought what, when, and what has been paid since. A dispute is settled in two minutes.
Set rules before selling
- A credit limit per customer
- A stated payment deadline
- One person authorised to grant exceptional credit
- A weekly review of the debt list
The software keeps the record, but the rule is a manager's decision. Applied consistently, it prevents most conflicts.
Rights per user
Your cashier doesn't need to edit a debt or see your margin. Good software limits each profile to the actions that concern it: taking payments for the cashier, full view for the manager.
A debt is only a real receivable if the customer can see it, acknowledge it and pay it in small amounts.
Getting started
Go through your notebook once, line by line, and enter each customer's balance. From then on, every new credit sale updates the account by itself. Logesco provides this customer account in the same software as the till, so there is no double entry.