Use AR Collections when you want to standardize, automate, and centrally track dunning, especially where manual chasing through spreadsheets and inboxes is no longer sustainable or controllable.
1. You have recurring overdue invoices and uneven follow-up
Use AR Collections when:
Different collectors follow up at different times or not at all.
Some customers get multiple emails in a week; others hear nothing for months.
Leadership cannot easily answer:
“Who has been contacted?”
“How often?”
“On what aging thresholds?”
How AR Collections helps
Enforces consistent cadences (for example, 10/27/40/56/60 days past due) per customer classification.
Guarantees one Dunning email per customer per day, even when multiple invoices hit a threshold.
Logs notes on customer records for every Dunning event, creating an auditable trail.
2. You manage management groups (parent/child) and need consolidated outreach
Use AR Collections when:
You have management groups where:
A parent management company owns multiple facilities or entities.
You want one consolidated Dunning email to a parent contact instead of dozens of separate emails.
Today, you manually build spreadsheets or statements grouping child customers under a parent.
How AR Collections helps
Uses hierarchy preferences to:
Treat all enrolled child customers as one group for Dunning.
Send one email to the parent’s Dunning contact.
Include all open invoices for the parent and enrolled children in:
Dunning tables.
Attached statements (PDF/CSV), where configured.
This is especially useful where your Workday setup uses a management company + facility model and you want a single executive contact to see all exposure in one place.
3. You need clear, itemized visibility for customers (and fewer back-and-forths)
Use AR Collections when:
Customers frequently ask:
“Can you send me a statement?”
“Which invoices are outstanding and how much remains on each?”
Your team manually:
Exports aging.
Builds ad hoc statements in Excel.
Repeats this work for the same customers every month.
How AR Collections helps
Dunning emails can include itemized tables showing:
Invoice number, invoice date, due date.
Age, original amount, amount paid, amount remaining.
Unapplied credits and unapplied payments (optional).
Optionally attach:
Statement PDF of open invoices.
Statement CSV for customers who prefer spreadsheets.
This reduces repeated ad hoc work and gives customers all key information in each reminder.
4. You have many independent facilities/customers and can’t scale manual chasing
Use AR Collections when:
You have hundreds or thousands of customers/facilities.
It is not realistic for collectors to:
Manually scan aging reports.
Build emails one by one.
Track who has been contacted and when.
How AR Collections helps
Runs scheduled Dunning across all enrolled customers:
Evaluates invoice ages against cadences.
Sends appropriate emails without manual intervention.
Lets you enroll/un-enroll customers in bulk and assign classifications so:
“Standard” accounts follow one cadence.
“Key” or “sensitive” accounts follow another.
5. You need alignment with AR Helpdesk and the AI Agent
Use AR Collections when:
You want outbound dunning and inbound AR inquiry handling to work from the same data and mailbox.
Today:
Dunning is done from one mailbox or system.
AR questions arrive in another mailbox.
There is no combined view of:
What was sent.
How the customer responded.
What follow-up tasks exist.
How AR Collections helps
Shares the same SmartCustomer tenant and data with AR Helpdesk and the AI Agent:
Dunning emails go out from the monitored AR mailbox.
Customer replies to those emails:
Are picked up by the AI Agent.
Are classified (invoice copy, statement, dispute, etc.).
Create tasks and draft replies for AR Helpdesk users.
Gives you a connected view:
Automated reminders → Customer replies → Tasks and resolution.
6. You want better control and auditability for AR leadership
Use AR Collections when:
Leadership needs:
A single view of open AR, organized by entity.
Measurable insight into:
How many Dunning notices have gone out.
How much has been collected over the period.
Current state:
Dunning is partially manual.
Activity is scattered across inboxes and spreadsheets.
It is difficult to prove that follow-up has happened in a controlled, consistent way.
How AR Collections helps
Provides dashboards and exports showing:
Open AR per entity.
Amount collected in a period (based on invoices moving from open to paid/partially paid).
Count of Dunning emails (“Invoices delivered over email”).
Count of notes (often equal to Dunning events).
Ensures every Dunning event adds a note on the customer record, improving audit readiness.
7. You need controlled automation—not “set-and-forget” risk
Use AR Collections when:
You want automation but still need:
Human control over:
Who is enrolled.
Hierarchy treatment.
Template content.
Exception handling.
You cannot allow a generic tool to:
Automatically email every open invoice without nuance (management groups, special customers, legal holds, etc.).
How AR Collections helps
Super Admins own:
SmartFlow configuration (dunning options, hierarchy, classification source).
AR Managers and Analysts own:
Enrollment and classification per customer.
Bulk changes to enrollment and classification.
There is a global pause:
You can stop all Dunning during:
Data issues.
Cutover periods.
Policy changes.
When AR Collections is not the right tool
Do not use AR Collections (for a particular customer/portfolio) when:
You do not want automated reminders at all (for example, legal hold, litigation).
You need case-by-case negotiation for every invoice and prefer fully manual outreach.
Your AR data in ERP is not yet reliable (for example, invoices missing due dates or customers not correctly mapped to parents); AR Collections depends on accurate ERP data.
In those cases, you can simply leave those customers unenrolled in AR Collections and continue handling them manually while still using AR Collections for the rest of the portfolio.