NEBS Is Software-Savvy and In Fine Form: NEBS offers most of the popular accounting software packages, including Quicken, QuickBooks and QuickBooks Pro, and the pre-printed forms and checks that are compatible with these programs. Choose from the NEBS Company Colors or Classic lines of multipurose forms, including invoices. These forms come in both continuous feed or laser printer formats.

Getting invoices paid by your customer is crucial to your company's financial health. That's why the chore shouldn't be in the hands of any single person. Spread the responsibility among a number of people from different operations within your company.

If collections are a real obstacle to the company's overall cash flow, all the following individuals should meet on a regular basis to organize accounts receivable efforts and assign priorities. Here are the key players:

• Accounting/bookkeeping. Adopt a short-term crisis management attitude when it comes to cash coming in. This means tracking daily the exact status of accounts receivable.

• Salespeople. Your salespeople are closest to your customers and can not only arrange terms when items are sold, but they can help prod customers to pay receivables on time, or to pay up if late.

• Credit/collections experts. One or more people in your company should have responsibility for both checking credit references of prospective customers and then collecting from them if they don't pay on time. These in-house experts should be in touch with accounting/ bookkeeping to have delays in payments flagged.

• Top executives. Especially when it comes to large individual accounts receivable, the situation may call for executive action. Sometimes it takes the company's president or chief financial officer to make the call to like-level executives at the overdue customer company. Often this kind of attention helps put delayed receivables at the top of the "to be paid" pile.