Credit Management & The Great Gatsby

I've just completed rereading a novel I haven't read since high school: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is (in my opinion) the Great American novel. Its themes are timeless.  The "muse" of the novel is one Mr. Nick Carraway, Gatsby's neighbor on the north shore of Long Island, New York.  Though Carraway was a bond salesman on Wall Street (circa 1925) ....I am convinced he had all the makings of a great Credit Manager.   Here's why:

In my many years in Accounts Receivable Management,  I often found myself at the vortex of seeing  many operational problems end up as disputes.  Getting sales taxes wrong on an invoice? They end up in Accounts Receivable.  Pricing errors?  They're now in your bucket. Installation problems .....those too age on your books. And so on and so on.  As these disputes multiply and age,  they can easily add another 30% to your Days Sales Outstanding.  Left unchecked, I've seen disputes cause terminations of Credit Managers (such as my boss of long ago) if not quantified and reported effectively.  You don't want your career to get a premature end....like Jay Gatsby himself.

So..this brings me back to Nick Carraway...Credit Manager.   Throughout the novel, he's the only consistent voice of reason and fidelity.  Like John Lennon's "Fool On A Hill"....Carraway sees through all the blemishes,  errors, and inconsistencies found among the  novel's principal characters.  But....his fidelity to his friend, Gatsby,  is never in question.  In the very end,  he stood alone as the only friend of Gatsby at his funeral.

I like to think as Credit Managers as being made of the same "stock" as Carraway.  They hold a unique position in seeing all the similar blemishes, errors and inconsistencies often found in a company's operations.  These issues end up in the lap of the Credit Manager.  But, as rule, faithful to her/his company and Collection team, the Credit Manager strives to address these disputes, as best  she/he can manage, given the tools at hand.

Getting away from the arts...and into the realities of the business world, getting a handle on your disputes is paramount for anyone involved in Accounts Receivable Managements.  The software which drives your Collection needs an adequate dispute feature which can easily quantify,  report and assign ownership to the plethora of disputes and their categories.   Business decisions thrive on data analysis, and your ability to easily create executive style reporting of these dispute can prove the agent of change within your company.

As a Credit Manager, you see the world from the lofty perch of your Accounts Receivables.....as did Nick Carraway, who saw all of humanity (good and the bad), while also being Gatsby's neighbor and friend.