Receivables and operating collections
What to collect today, whom to contact, and how to record the agreement, without losing track of what you’re owed.
What it is
Collections (sidebar › Revenue) is an operating list as of today. It has no date selector because it answers a single question: what needs action now? Historical analysis (full aging, days to collect, payment behavior) lives in Reports › Collections and receivables. See Reports and performance.
Requirements
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Plan | Pro, Scale, or Developer. On Free and Starter, the page shows an invitation to change plans. |
| Permission | Collections. |
| AI collections | Pro, Scale, or Developer. See AI collections. |
What goes into the list
The Collections list comes from the unified accounts receivable view, so it brings both rails together:
- approved or invoiced quotes that aren’t paid yet, due on the approval date plus the payment term’s days;
- open invoices with a balance, with their own due date, including those issued without a quote;
- except recurring retainers, which charge themselves every month and are never treated as overdue receivables.
Each account shows its balance: for a quote, the total minus payments already received (deposits, installments or payments of a milestone plan; with a plan, the balance includes payments not yet due); for an invoice, the total minus partial payments and credit notes. Amounts are expressed in your business currency; if you sell in several currencies, the note below the page says how they were converted and which one was left out for lack of an available exchange rate.
With a milestone plan, what’s overdue is only what’s payable, in your business’s day: open milestones whose due date has passed. The row is due with the oldest open, unpaid milestone and, if the remaining ones are waiting for you to mark them completed, it says Awaiting completion instead of a due date. The overdue total, the Receivables age, reports and the overdue counter in the sidebar only add milestones that are already overdue; the rest of the plan stays not yet due, and the cash forecast puts each milestone on its date. If the quote already has an invoice, the row is the invoice’s, with what’s payable from its quote’s milestones.
Invoices in the list
An invoice is collected from its own detail, because that’s where the payment is recorded in its history. That’s why invoice rows show View invoice instead of Paid, and payment promises are recorded only on quote rows. Remind via WhatsApp works on both.
The unified accounts receivable view
Cord keeps a single view that joins quotes and invoices with a common shape: origin, number, currency, total, paid, balance, and days overdue. Rules of that view:
- A quote with an open invoice appears only as the invoice, because the invoice carries the real balance; counting it twice would double your receivables.
- An invoice’s balance already deducts partial payments and credit notes.
- Recurring retainers don’t enter.
- With a milestone plan, the view also carries what’s payable today, in your business’s day:
saldo_exigible,vence_exigibleanddias_vencido_exigible. That’s what Collections, the collections agent, reports and Workflows read; without a plan, they’re the same as the balance, its due date and its days overdue.
It’s used by the AI collections agent, each customer’s account statement, and Workflows receivables queries.
Today’s summary
| Widget | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Overdue | Total overdue and number of accounts. Tap it to filter the table. |
| Due this week | Accounts falling due in the next 7 days. |
| Promises coming due | Promises committed for today or earlier, with the historical compliance percentage. |
| Overdue, untouched | Overdue accounts with no payment promise. Tap it to filter the table. |
| Handle first | Priority by amount and days overdue: what weighs most, on top. |
| Payment promises | Pending promises, with date and amount. |
| Promise compliance | Kept versus broken. |
| Credit exceeded | Customers with an open balance above their configured credit limit. |
| Receivables age | Not yet due, 1–30 days, 31–60 days, and more than 60 days. |
| Accounts receivable | The actionable table. |
With Customize you can hide, reorder, or resize the widgets, with the same icon buttons (Library, Reset, and Done), the same floating library, and the same keyboard support as Home. From the library you can also add Credit limits exceeded: how many clients are above their configured credit limit today. That preference is personal and doesn’t change any calculation.
The table and its actions
The table filters by All, Overdue, With promise, or Untouched. Each row shows customer, number, terms, due date, status, and balance, with these actions:
Record a payment promise
- In the row, open the payment promise.
- Enter the date the customer committed to pay, the amount (optional), and a note of up to 400 characters.
- Save. The promise appears in the widgets and the account no longer counts as “untouched”.
- When the date arrives, mark it fulfilled or let it lapse as broken. If you entered it by mistake, delete it.
A promise helps organize follow-up and measure compliance. It does not lower the balance, extend the due date, run a charge, or remove the account from overdue. If you edit an active promise, the new one replaces the previous one.
Remind via WhatsApp
Remind via WhatsApp opens WhatsApp with a pre-written message: customer, number, total, due date, and document link. If the customer record has a phone number, it opens the conversation with that number; otherwise you choose the contact. Review the text before sending it: delivery happens in WhatsApp, not in Cord.
Record a manual payment
The Paid button marks the quote as paid, after a confirmation (“Record the payment of [number] for [amount]?”). On invoices, View invoice opens its detail so you record the payment there.
Recording a payment is a manual record: it doesn’t create a charge or confirm a deposit. Use it only after verifying the transfer in your bank, and never to simulate revenue.
Automatic reminders
Besides what you do from this page, Cord sends automatic payment reminders on its own: a ladder before and after each invoice’s due date, on the schedule you choose in Settings › Invoicing › Reminders, and a notice in the days before each quote’s due date. You turn them off on that same screen, and a client on Never email doesn’t get them either.
Late interest
Automatic late interest is suspended while the legal review by country concludes: new rates can’t be configured today and the monthly process generates no charges. Interest recorded earlier still appears separately to keep the balance traceable.
Manual and AI collections
| Plan | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Pro, Scale, and Developer | Receivables, priorities, promises, WhatsApp, payment recording, and the AI collections agent, with installment plans. |
Limits
- A promise doesn’t change the balance, and it’s only recorded on quotes.
- Paid marks the whole quote as paid: record partial payments on the document. Invoices are collected from their detail.
- A sale in a currency without an available exchange rate isn’t added to the totals until one exists.
Common problems
Collections doesn’t appear. Check that your plan is Pro or higher and that you have the Collections permission.
A customer paid the deposit and the account is still on the list. That’s expected: the row shows the remaining balance, already without the deposit, until everything is paid.
I don’t see an overdue invoice. The list includes open invoices with a due date and a balance. A draft, voided, already paid, or undated invoice doesn’t appear; look for it in Invoices.
An amount doesn’t match the document. The list expresses everything in your business currency. Check the note below the page: a currency without an available exchange rate isn’t added.
A promise didn’t lower the balance. That’s intentional: only a recorded payment lowers it.