Question about old accounts

[carouselkids]

First of all, please dont read anything into this. I LOVE paying my consignors because happy consignors = happy customers.

My question is: As I look at my open consignment accounts, I see tons of people who have 80 cents, $1.25, $2.06 etc.. in their account and have had zero activity in over 18 months. Nothing consigned, no money picked up, no purchases etc... It's like they moved to another State or something.

What do you guys do about this? I hate having a consignment report that is 25 pages long becuase someone doesnt come get their 30 cents. By the time I write them a check and mail it, I've lost money (45cents for a stamp, 15 cents for a check etc..) but I also don't feel that I can just "take" it either. Please help!

[tarabornagain]

Something I've done, after checking with my accountant, is donating the number from their account onto a charity account. First I make at least two attempts to contact them (phone, email). If I do happen to get ahold of them, they usually tell me to go ahead and donate the balance.

Of course, I make a note in their accounts of when and how I tried to contact them. When I transfer the balances I make sure to note which charity account it went to. In the charity account, I make a note of which account the balance came from. Every December and June I go through and check accounts like this and make calls/send emails on accounts that have a balance of less than $10 and haven't had any activity in over 6mo.

[reeveja]

In the consignor contract that they sign when opening their account, I have verbiage that states that if their account is inactive for a period of 6 months then their balance maybe forfeited.

I run a report monthly for any active accounts without activity in past 6 months. If the balance is under $3, I clear it against a store account and make notes on both as to the amount and date transferred. Otherwise, I send either an e-mail and/or post card telling them that they should stop in to collect their balance within the next 30 days.

Then if no response after that, I clear it the same way as those under $3. I've been doing this for amount 5 months and it has been working well. Hope this helps.

[tarabornagain]

Check with your state on that, reeveja. You may have some legal issues there.