Ten Tips on Prioritizing Work in the Credit Department

Prioritizing in the workplace is a constant juggling act.  One important but small part of the entire process of prioritizing involves recognizing the difference between tasks that are considered urgent in contrast to tasks that are important.  Steps you may want to consider as it relates to prioritizing include:

1. Stop writing to-do lists. Instead create must-do lists
2. If you must create priority task lists, use A, B and C priorities.  Complete A priority tasks before working on B priorities.  Ignore C priorities until they become B or A priorities
3. Make development of department personnel a priority.  Managers are paid to make things get done, not to do the work themselves
4. Prioritize collection calls in descending dollar value of delinquent balances
5. Prioritize your time by avoiding time wasters such as excessivly long or excessively numerous meetings
6. Make sure you understand what your manager considers to be your top priorities and complete them --- on time every time
7. Make sure that finding and fixing root causes of problems is a priority, otherwise you are doomed to fix the same types of problems over and over again
8. Make it a priority to strike the right balance between work and life, otherwise you risk burnout on the job
9. Make your professional development a personal priority
10. Make monitoring customer credit risk a priority.  Doing so will help reduce delinquencies as well as bad debt write offs

© 2010 by Michael C. Dennis.  All Rights Reserved.  Michael is author of "1001 Collection Tools and Tips."