How do you manage former tenants arrears (FTA) before Mobysoft’s FTA Manager?

We have a debt recovery team and former debt is just one element that we look after. Prior to FTA manager we used our Housing Management System (HMS) to derive the caseload. But, we had trouble with the accuracy of the caseload and so the team ended up using additional reports and spreadsheets.

Why did formers become a focus for VIVID?

There were several reasons for focusing on former debt. Firstly, we want to help existing tenants avoid leaving with arrears, so they are not burdened with unnecessary debt.

There are also other reasons such as aligning the teams that collect current and former debt. As the current arrears team use RentSense, and by deploying Mobysoft’s FTA Manager, the teams use the same systems. The rules in RentSense in help the current tenants team minimise the number of tenants leaving with arrears. And the FTA manager helps the team focus on the right cases of former debt.

This also helps the organisation to further improve our key performance indicators and help reduce bad debt and annual write offs.

Was there an immediate impact of using FTA Manager?

The issues faced by the formers’ team was the huge caseload. The system could not refine the cases by logic or by time. So the team were seeing cases that they had looked at for several years. The benefit of FTA manager it would be able to remove these cases that we did not want to see, due to the rules within the system.

Now the team can see each case and what action is needed and it focuses their attention on being able to collect the debt. It also understands when ex-tenants are keeping to arrangements to clear old arrears, so again not presenting those cases.

It immediately helped us cleanse our caseload and focus on the front end of the process so the team is more effective.

Are you able to be proactive in preventing current tenants leaving with arrears?

The current team do this with RentSense as there are rules that help them monitor accounts where we know are tenants are leaving, so the former team see fewer new cases.

Both teams work closely together, this has helped see a reduction in newly created debt. We are able to ensure accounts close to termination that their balances are correct, and if and when new cases are passed on the joined up approach of teams and systems helps smooth the process and ensure continuity.

How has FTA Manager helped the team? And what have been the results of caseload for example.

As mentioned earlier caseload has halved with FTA Manager, and it has really helped the team focus on the right cases. They can now see their workload for the week, the number of cases, the value of cases in arrears and overall arrears. It feels achievable and they know they can complete their caseload each week.team see fewer new cases.

This has really helped motivate the team, as they are not doing admin or creating reports, but getting on with their job, and being more effective. For example they are setting up more Direct Debits, they are able to signpost and help more people as a result.