We welcomed Fabien Corneillie, Partner, Chartered Accountant and Auditor at CTN France, to our offices in Lille. It was an opportunity for a friendly discussion about the accountancy profession and the importance of accounts receivable. Fabien Corneillie takes us behind the scenes of LeanPay’s implementation at CTN France, and explains what a new tool can mean in practice in terms of process changes and resistance to change.
Before LeanPay
Occasional customer reminders
Manual reminders that lacked professionalism
A paper-based list of customers and their invoices
With LeanPay
Systematic customer reminders
More professional reminders thanks to a more structured process
Automatic import of all invoices
To better understand the context in which LeanPay was introduced at CTN France, Fabien Corneillie first explained the firm’s background and scope of services. “CTN has a long history, as the firm was founded in 1929. We cover all the services connected with accountancy.” CTN France offers a broad range of services, including:
Whether for its own business or on behalf of its customers, CTN France has found that chasing receivables is a real skill that requires a dedicated person. “When you follow up with a customer who has paid late, you are often dealing with disorganisation, bad faith, or stalling tactics on the customer side. You hear things like, ‘The cheque is ready, it’s on its way.’ But we know that is not always true.”
“It is very important to have a tool that helps standardise customer reminders and speed up the process.”
Fabien Corneillie then explains his approach:
“One of the key points is to make contact with the customer in the days following the invoice being sent, to make sure everything is in order. ‘Have you received the invoice? Are you the right contact person? Is there any issue with the invoice?’ These three questions help prevent quite a few issues in accounts receivable. If the invoice is sent to someone who is not responsible for it, it will not be paid on time. The same applies if there is a problem with the invoice because the wrong price was charged. Sometimes, that is simply used as an excuse by the customer not to pay, or not to move the invoice into the approval process at all.”
CTN France uses Cegid Quadratus as its invoicing tool. However, it does not include any customer reminder modules. Customer reminders were therefore handled manually, following this process: “Before, each accountant would receive a paper list of customers and their related invoices. It was then up to them to decide whether a reminder should be sent or not. I put a stop to that. If an invoice has been issued, it should be followed up. Otherwise, it should not have been invoiced in the first place” recalls Fabien Corneillie.
The result was clear: customer reminders were time-consuming, not always very professional, and not frequent enough.
Fabien Corneillie, who is responsible for monitoring digital tools, then took charge of finding a solution suited to customer reminders. He had already heard about LeanPay and had seen many of our LinkedIn posts. He wanted to test the application before deciding whether to adopt it on a long-term basis.
“In general, there is always some pushback, some resistance to change. And that is normal. At the beginning, when I introduced LeanPay to our administration team, I got some negative reactions: ‘No, this will not work. It will not be practical.’” explains Fabien Corneillie.
For CTN France, the most suitable setup was the accounting synchronisation. “The implementation went very smoothly because everything was fairly simple. I only had to send an Excel customer ledger. What took longer was sending the PDF invoices, because there was a large volume of them.”
A small anecdote: at the beginning, while testing the tool, Fabien Corneillie tried different reminder levels and noticed that the highest-level reminders triggered a lot of reactions from customers with invoices that had been overdue for several months.
Today, LeanPay is used internally by the accountant to manage customer invoices. She works in batches, as CTN France has a large volume of receivables to manage. The process has evolved so that every invoice issued is now sent both to the customer and to the LeanPay application at the same time. This new way of working has now become part of the routine.
“Now, a systematic reminder is sent for all invoices that are issued.”
What comes next? “Automated reminders, as we have not tested that feature yet.”
What about the results? Fabien Corneillie highlights several clear benefits:
“It also helped us confirm that we had an issue with sending our invoices, as a significant number of our customers were not receiving them.”
CTN France was particularly won over by the PDF invoices automatically attached to reminder emails, together with the online customer portal where customers can also download and pay their invoices.
“One of LeanPay’s strengths is the ability to download PDF invoices. There will always be people who say they do not have the invoice. I have heard all sorts of reasons: ‘It was sent to the wrong email address. It went into spam. I do not know where I put it. I deleted it’, and so on.”
Today, CTN France has become a highly active and engaged customer, and does not hesitate to recommend LeanPay. This is how another Paris-based accountancy firm asked CTN France for feedback on the solution before testing it and becoming a customer as well. “A recommendation from someone in the same profession is reassuring and can help confirm your initial impression,” concludes Fabien Corneillie.
LeanPay provides finance teams with an accounts receivable software to eliminate late payments and collect 100% of their revenue.
💚 Build with pride and passion in Lille, France.
.png)
.png)
.png)