That Thing You Do

I always thought it was funny how everyone on the show Friends knew that Chandler had a job they just didn't know exactly what it was. I still think this is one of the funniest running gags on the show mainly because I face the exact same problem every day.

"So how's work?
"Good. My spreadsheet on the latest payment trends is almost done"
"Ummm....that's cool.....I think"

"How'd it go today?"
"It was rough. The new price list I was waiting on still didn't show up. We are three weeks into the quarter."
"Wow...that's not good....I guess."

I seriously doubt that most of my own family members know what I do other than collect past due invoices. In fact while that definitely is what got my foot in the door, as an Accounts Receivable Supervisor I do very little collections and mainly spend my day fixing problems in an attempt to save the company I work for money.

Let's take today as an example of everything that went on:

* The morning always starts with cash being applied. This morning we received a large of amount of funds that didn't have an account that it could be tied to. Through out the day I spent time trying to figure out why this customer paid us for product I couldn't find they owed

*XYZ customer from Germany responded that we didn't actually ship their product under normal 60 day terms but in fact it went to a consignment (third party) warehouse and there was an entirely unfamiliar system that had to be gone through so we could get paid. Unfortunately XYZ couldn't tell us how this system worked even though they created it. This problem split off into a second problem involving trying to figure out if any other XYZ locations were also doing this.

*Customer ABC sent us a letter saying they were reorganizing and would be contacting us soon with a reduced payment plan for the balance they owed us. Anytime you hear payment plan and reorganizing you can bet the words bankrupt are not too far behind. Hours were spent trying to get as much unused product back as possible.

*Customer DEF wanted us to begin shipping to three dozen new locations each of which required their own individual accounts in our accounting system. Today I researched, tomorrow I implement. Goodbye Thursday morning.

It may sound boring, but it's what pays the bills and I'm good at it. Not the most interesting job in the world, but for the most part I enjoy it. It's nice to be able to fix things even if it is for a brief period of time. If you have trouble sleeping please bookmark this page for future use.