BILLING, A/R & PAYMENTS
Know who owes you what, without building a spreadsheet to find out.
AccountScout bills from the ads that actually ran, ages your receivables, takes card and ACH payments, and gives you the reports to see it all — built for publishing, not adapted from general accounting software.
THE PROBLEM
General accounting software does not understand a newspaper.
It has no concept of an insertion, an issue date, a contract that earns a rate based on annual volume, an agency commission, or a make-good. So publishers bolt something onto QuickBooks, keep the ad detail in a second system, and reconcile the two by hand every month.
The result is that the numbers everyone needs are hard to get. Which advertisers are past due. What a category is doing year over year. Whether an account has earned its contract rate. The data exists, but assembling it is a project, so it gets done quarterly instead of weekly.
Meanwhile the money moves slowly. Invoices go out by mail or as PDF attachments. Payments come back as checks. Someone keys them in. An advertiser who wanted to pay by card three weeks ago never got the chance.
THE SHAPE OF WHAT YOU ARE OWED
Collect at the order, and the tail gets shorter.
Aging is a live view of the same orders production worked from — current, thirty, sixty, ninety — rather than something reconstructed from an export once a month. Every payment taken at the point of sale is money that never enters it.
- Card and ACH payments post against the invoice, with receipts sent automatically
- Surcharging handled to the rules, including the states that prohibit it outright
- Accounts past a threshold you set can be flagged or held before another ad runs
When you get paid
- Quick Pay
- Card or ACH
- Surcharge-compliant
WHAT CHANGES
Billing stops being a monthly reconstruction.
- Invoices generate from what ran, with the ad detail the advertiser can actually verify
- Aging and collections are a live view, not a monthly reconstruction
- Advertisers pay by card or ACH and the payment posts against the invoice
- Contract rates, agency commissions, and adjustments are handled as first-class concepts
- Past-due accounts can be flagged or held before another ad runs on credit
HOW IT WORKS
From what ran to money in the account.
The orders sales booked and production placed are the records that produce the invoice — so billing is a step in the workflow rather than a separate system to reconcile.
- 1
Billing comes from the orders
What was sold and what ran are the same records that produce the invoice. There is nothing to re-enter, and nothing to reconcile between two systems that disagree.
- 2
Invoices carry real detail
Advertisers see what ran, when, and at what size — which is the single biggest reason billing disputes go away before they start.
- 3
Payments come in electronically
Card and ACH payments post against the invoice, and receipts go out automatically instead of being typed by hand.
- 4
Aging is always current
Thirty, sixty, ninety — by rep, by category, by title. The collections conversation starts from a live view rather than last month's export.
- 5
Credit rules apply themselves
Accounts past a threshold you set can be flagged or held automatically, so the decision is not left to whoever answers the phone during a deadline rush.
- 6
Reports are already written
More than 300 built-in reports, so the answer to "what did this category do last year" is a report and not a project.
PROOF
"Fake Brains has surpassed all the others we have worked with, as their team understands the meaning of partnership, and their products deliver at speed for a price that makes the others seemingly laughable."
Hundreds of publications, millions of ads managed, and more than 300 built-in reports — running on software built in-house in Colorado since 1991.
- 300+
- Built-in reports, so the answer is a report rather than a project.
- 8 modules
- Connected modules sharing one database, from the sold order to the paid invoice.
WHERE IT CONNECTS
Getting paid touches everyone.
Self-service advertiser portal
Let advertisers see their statements and pay themselves, without a phone call to your office.
ExploreAd sales CRM
Reps see the balance before they sell more on credit to an account that is already behind.
ExploreAdvertiser email marketing
Email past-due accounts as a group, with the message built from the real balance.
ExploreCOMMON QUESTIONS
Questions publishers ask about billing and receivables.
The rest of the workflow
See It In Action
Tell us how billing runs today
How the ads get from sold to invoiced, what gets re-keyed, and what you cannot get a straight report on. We will show you where AccountScout fits — and where it doesn't.