Yes, you read the title correctly. There is an extension which allows you to predict late payments with Business Central cloud. This extension is a game changer for some organizations. The Late Payments Prediction Extension utilizes Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) with your customer receivables data. The extension predicts late payments with Business Central by analyzing your customer’s payment history and offering a prediction with a degree of confidence with regards to how likely it is for this payment to be paid late.
The Benefit
Sometimes there can be bias with assuming which customer is going to pay late. This bias can come from a recent late payment being top of mind, a very large payment that was made late in the past, or some other reason. That being said, what matters is that these biases can be corrected. With the ability to predict late payments with Business Central cloud the system looks at all the data without any bias and makes accurate predictions.
Late Payment Prediction is a wonderful tool that any company can utilize. Let’s imagine you posted one hundred invoices in Business Central. Next open Customer Ledger Entries to see which customers are predicted to pay late, what the confidence of that prediction is, and even sort by Amount to see the largest transactions to proactively begin the collection process early. This helps to bring down the days to pay on these invoices, increases your cash flow, and all the other benefits that go along with collection of payments.
Set Up
Setup is different for Business Central cloud and on premise customers. Cloud customers have this feature included in their subscription. That being said, it is not enabled by default. On premise customers have this feature too. However, to use the feature you will need to set up and use your own Azure subscription.
Setting up Late Payment Prediction in Business Central cloud is fairly easy and can be accomplished by most. The steps needed to take are:
Choose the search icon, enter Late Payment Prediction Setup, and select the related link.
Enable Predictions.
Change the Model Quality Threshold and Model Type if needed and Update Payment Predictions (if you have enough data).
Schedule Payment Predictions whenever the time works best for you. I recommend running the Business Central payment predictions during the middle of the night. As a result, each day when you log into Business Central predictions are updated.
Where can you see Late Payment Predictions
You can see them in the Customer Ledger Entries and in a Sales Quote
Breaking Down Payment Predictions Scores
High Prediction = 90% or above
Medium Prediction = 80 – 89% or above
Low Prediction = 70% or below
In conclusion, using Predict Late Payments with Business Central Cloud is a wonderful feature that should be utilized by most.
