We’ve had some really good fortune at MetCredit recently.
Some excellent people have joined our accounting team, bringing the kind of experience, judgment and professionalism you hope for when filling important financial roles.
While I’m calling it good fortune, I know perfectly well that hiring the right people involves a lot more than luck.
You need the right candidate to become available at the right time, see something worthwhile in your organization, fit the culture, understand the work… and actually WANT the job!
Getting all of those pieces to land together is worth celebrating.
It also got me thinking about the opposite situation.
What happens when the person who knows everything leaves?
Every business has one.
Maybe it’s your controller, credit manager, senior bookkeeper or long-serving AR person. They know which customers always pay on the second reminder, who needs a phone call instead of an email, which AP contact actually gets things done and which “dispute” has already been settled twice.
They know where the bodies are buried.
Just financially speaking, I hope.
Your Software Doesn’t Know Everything
Modern accounting systems are impressive.
They can store invoices, notes, payment history, contacts, aging data and gi-normous amounts of customer information.
Yet experienced people carry another layer of knowledge that’s way harder to capture.
Like when your AR manager remembers that a customer changed controllers eight months ago and payments have been slipping ever since.
Or how your bookkeeper knows the owner personally approves anything over $25,000.
Someone else remembers why a credit limit was reduced three years ago, even though the notes in the system say only “management decision.”
Right?
That kind of knowledge develops through thousands of conversations and micro-observations over years.
Then one day that person retires, takes another job, moves, gets sick, takes parental leave or maybe just decides they’ve had enough of looking at aging reports.
Suddenly everyone finds out just how much information was stored between their ears!
Institutional Knowledge Is an Asset
Businesses are pretty good at protecting the usual assets.
We insure buildings and equipment, back up data and maintain cybersecurity systems. We control access to our bank accounts.
Institutional knowledge deserves a place on that same list.
Your most experienced financial people understand how money actually moves through your customer relationships, day after day.
That affects credit decisions, collections, forecasting and cash flow.
If one employee is the only soul who understands a major customer’s payment process, that knowledge has real economic value.
It also poses a major risk.
I’m not suggesting you freak out every time someone books a vacation.
I am saying that if your AR operation gets wobbly when one person disappears for a couple of weeks, you’ve learned something important about the business.
The Problem Usually Appears After They’re Gone
Here’s the trap:
Your best people make difficult work look easy.
They know what needs attention and just deal with it, before anyone even notices.
That creates an illusion that the process itself is working beautifully.
Then, one day, they leave. As all people eventually do.
Now nobody knows why one account gets called at 45 days while another is allowed to run to 75. A customer says, “Well, we’ve always done it this way,” and nobody can even confirm or deny if that’s true.
Old disputes reappear, and follow-ups get missed.
A replacement employee inherits hundreds of accounts with tons of data but very little helpful story.
That is a crappy way to discover how dependent you were on one person.
Write Down the Stuff That Does Matter
I’ve seen lots of process documentation that explains exactly how to click through software screens and precious little about how to make a good decision.
Which is backwards.
Document the judgment points.
Like, what triggers escalation?
or who needs to approve a credit-limit increase?
When exactly does sales get involved, if at all?
And what makes an account risky enough for management review?
Then, at what point does internal AR hand it to a collection agency?
Which customers have unusual billing or approval requirements?
And when an exception is made, write down WHY.
Future employees can always figure out where the buttons are.
But understanding why your company handles one customer differently from another is way harder to reconstruct after the people who made those decisions have got out of Dodge.
Cross-Training Is Cheap Insurance
There’s also a wonderfully low-tech solution to a lot of this risk.
Always have more than one person know what’s going on.
That sounds obvious, but in a busy company, it can be surprisingly difficult.
People naturally become specialists, meaning they know more and more about less and less.
The best AR person gets the difficult accounts because they’re so darned good at them. Your senior bookkeeper handles the complicated customer because it’s faster than explaining the whole epic history to someone else.
Today’s efficiency can create tomorrow’s fragility.
Cross-training doesn’t require everyone to know everything.
It just means someone else can step in, understand the essentials and keep the wheels on the bus without spending three days hunting through inboxes and note pads.
Vacations are a pretty good test.
If an important process becomes painful every time its owner takes a well-earned week off, don’t ignore this free clue.
Give the New Person a Fighting Chance
Even an excellent hire who’s done their homework arrives with a blank space about your company’s history.
We’re always reminded of that as new people continue to join MetCredit.
Expertise transfers relatively easily.
Context takes shape over time.
A new accounting professional can understand financial controls, reporting and AR management from day one.
They still need to learn how YOUR customers behave, how your team communicates and where the odd little wrinkles exist.
Help them get there faster:
Give them useful notes.
Introduce them to key people, and invite those people to share what they know.
Explain why procedures exist instead of handing over a binder and saying, “That’s just how we do it around here.”
And enable experienced employees to transfer knowledge while they’re still there to answer questions.
Two weeks before someone’s retirement party is not an ideal knowledge-capture strategy.
Your Outside Partners Hold Knowledge Too
There’s another layer businesses often overlook.
Long-term outside partners can become part of your continuity system.
Your accountant, lawyer, banker and collection agency often understand pieces of your business that take years to discover and piece together independently.
A collection partner that has worked with you over time understands your standards, your account mix, your expectations and how you want customers treated.
That can be especially useful when internal responsibilities change.
At MetCredit, lots of our client relationships span decades. The people on both sides change, while the working knowledge built through the relationship keeps on adding value.
That continuity is one reason I believe good business partnerships become more valuable with time.
Nobody Is Irreplaceable. Knowledge Is Harder.
You can always hire another controller or credit manager.
You can find another bookkeeper.
And if you hire well, the new person might ultimately become even better than the one who left.
But there’s no way you can instantly recreate ten years of conversations, judgment calls, customer history and bite-sized lessons ingested the hard way.
So protect that knowledge while you have it.
Document the decisions that matter. Cross-train enough to create resilience and keep customer information useful and current. Give new people context instead of expecting them to discover everything through trial and error or happenstance.
And when you manage to bring an outstanding new person into an important role, take a minute to celebrate that all the pieces that had to come together somehow did.
We certainly do.
MetCredit works with businesses across Canada to keep receivables moving and recover overdue accounts professionally. If staffing changes have left challenging accounts without due attention or if you are wondering about something else, reach out anytime. We’re here to help.
President and CEO of MetCredit, Canada's top-performing consumer and commercial collection agency
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