A Good Credit Department is VitalBy Bill

A NY merchant selling services or goods a r on a credit basis. who still thinks his credit department is a "necessary evil" is in for trouble.

After exploring the credit granting and collection procedures in hundreds of firms during my professional career as a credit management consultant, including classification and analysis of notes, contracts and accounts receivable, and breaking them down into current and delinquents, I've formed some very definite conclusions of my own. In fact, I have wondered many times how some of my clients have stayed in business.

Nearly always I found the same characteristics: lack of ability to concentrate on certain operating functions, with the result that some amateur was in the credit department.

It always takes a good sales force to create a credit problem. Yet, some of the so-called management geniuses I have met didn't know that it takes a creature with profound ability to solve collection problems created by the sales {orce and still keep customer good will.

Another mystery clouding management: a management team holding regular or periodic sales meetings, but no "credit sales meetings."

More mystery appears when I ask what experience the credit people in the office have had. What training have they had in public relations? What experience in modern collection work? How much time each day is either spent or allowed to control credit outstanding-other than posting and

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billing? Usually, I am told the office people tlo credit work in their spare time.

Far too often people are hired by small businessmen and the job routine is changed to fit the new employees. Why not hire people qualified to fit the job classifiications already established? If there is some magic wand businessmen wave over the heads of neophytes hired to hold down the credit desk, I've never seen the wand. But I've met a lot of neophytes who profess to understand credit manasement.

I have found utter complacency at the highest levels of management, and underpaid credit people charged with heavy responsibility. Perhaps, management, suppliers and manufacturers are in a dead end, and together with trade associations, have failed in their educational programs directed at credit personnel and sales people through management.

BlLt t0Cl(E, author of this outspoken story has operated his own credit consultant firm for the last 13 years, and has been in the credit field for 35 years. _An easy reference manual on Credit Manage. ment f0r Credit Personnel is available from Bill for, $12.50. Interested persons may contact CLM for more information regardihg this complete manual.

Somewhere alons the line retailcrs of goods and services have lost sight of the fact that there is as much difference between pro{essional credit management and amateur credit management as between professional and amateur accounting.

For management not to realize this is unbelievable.

Wholesoling Productivity Confirmed

The U.S. Census Bureau has officially recognized for the first time the o'value added" concept of wholesaling which has long been advanced by the National.American Wholesale Lumber Association,

J. J. Mulrooney of NAWLA reports that the Census Bureau has published advance results of a survey of value added to goods by merchant wholesalers.

"Some people have had difficulty recognizing that a lumber wholesaler actually makes a given quantity of lumber worth more at the buyer's end than it was at the manufacturer's end of the distribution process by virtue of his ability to put the product at the right place at the right time where demand is greatest, by guaranteeing delivery, by financing the shipment, and by many other services performed," Mulrooney points out. "Measurement of this added value by the Census Bureau for the first time this year gives official government recognition to what we have been saying all along."

Lumbermon Coqches Rink Chomps

The Berkeley Seals juvenile hockey team, coached by Bay Area lumberman Paul Gaboury, brought northern California its first amateur hockey charnpionship at a recent tournament in Squaw Valley.

The Seals, composed of boys under 18, bested the Spokane Americans, the Pacific Northwest champs, by a score of 5-3 and tied the California champion Van Nuys Hawks, 5-5, to win the Robert S. Hannum Championship Trophy awarded on the basis of total goals.

Neither Spokane nor Van Nuys has ever been beaten by an American team, according to Coach Gaboury, who heads up Golden Gate Lumber Co. in Berkeley.

Key play in the tourney came with six minutes to go in the last period with the Berkeley team trailing Van Nuys, 5-3. When Van Nuys received a second penalty, the Seals gambled by pulling their goalie so as to give them a three-skater advantage. They imrnediately scored and with one minute to go team captain John Costello scored again on a breakaway to even it up 5-5.

Building Costs Up 20% by 1970

Building costs are expected to keep rising at the rate of three percent annually, according to a recent issue of the Insider's Neusletter.

At that rate of increase costs would be 17 to 20 percent higher in 1970 than they are now. Increased wages and machinery costs are reportedly held responsible as the main inflationary factors.

to more and more California dealers and distributors. For year around supplies of dimension lumber and precision-trimmed studs, depend on D & R and these 4 Oregon and Washington mills:

Old Growth Fir Dimension from F.S,P. Lumber Co., Port Orford, Oregon

Hemlock Studs from Warrenton Lumber Co., Warrenton, Oregon

Hemlock Dimension from Westport Lumber Co., Westport, Oregon

Douglas Fir Studs from Shepherd & Dasher Lumber Co., Longview, Wash,