“LBM Talks” hosts top professionals from different sectors of the lumber and building material industry to share their expertise, with a heavy emphasis on practical, tactical strategies to help you serve your markets and grow your business.
In this episode, Thea Dudley and Maureen Brennan break down the content of a recent article by CreditSafe titled “Why Tariffs Require CFOs to Reshape Working Capital Strategies.” Thea and Maureen discuss how current tariffs could affect your business and how to be proactive in protecting your company.
Watch this conversation and more great content from LBM journal via our YouTube channel here.
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Please send all podcast inquiries to thea@creditoverlord.com.
Get in touch with Maureen at maureen.brennan@creditsafe.com.
Connect with Maureen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maureen-brennan-596248a/
Prefer to read about it instead? Take a peek at the transcript below.
(Editor’s note: Transcript is AI-generated and may include some errors.)
Thea Dudley
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of LBM talks credit. I’m Thea Dudley, your host, also known as the credit overlord. And you know, there is so much going on in the world of credit right now, trade credit is going nuts, and a lot of it is tied to tariffs. And I saw this amazing article that I went nuts over when I read it. I had to print it out. I think I sent it to everybody I’ve ever known, and it’s called Why tariffs require CFOs to reshape working capital strategies. And it just the whole thing was so good and had so many, like, Great points in it and topics. And then my favorite part was it gave you what to do. It just didn’t say, Hey, here’s some stuff to scare you know, scare you witless. So I reached out to the folks at credit safe, because that’s who put the article out. Credit safe has a lot of really cool articles that come out, so there’s always something that’s catching my attention. So I got with my friend Maureen, who has been in this industry forever. She happens to work at creditsafe, so I reached out and I said, Hey, can we talk about this? And we had the best time talking about it. I’m like, You have to come on and share this insight and information with the LBM group, because tariffs are a big thing for us. We get a lot of different supplies from all over the place. Now, Marina is not new at all. I mean, you have been around you, I think you’re with credit, say, for like, 13 years. And then how long were you with nacm before that? Probably close to 30. Okay, so this woman knows trade credit inside and out. So thank you for being here. Oh, thank you for inviting me. Well, we’re going to dive right into it, and we’ll put a link in the body of this podcast for you guys to be able to click on and get over to this this article. But first thing that was on it was talking about how all of these tariffs are impacting it and tariffs, the first thing it called out was tariffs, increase the risk of non payment. And, you know, in looking at that, you wouldn’t really think about it right off the gate, but Maureen, it really does.
Maureen Brennan
Well, yeah, it does, because it’s, you know, it’s gonna, it’s gonna slow everything up.
Thea Dudley
Well it definitely squeezes your profitability, because now that money’s got to come from somewhere, and the delays and what that costs you. And just, you know, talking about almost the opposite effect of what we were trying to do was increase business in America. And it’s, it’s almost created this bizarre squeeze. So it’s, it goes back to knowing the credit of everybody that you’re doing business with, and not only the credit of of who you’re extending credit to, but now I gotta look at my vendors. Are they? Are they in a spot where they can sustain this kind of impact?
Maureen Brennan
Well, you know, if you take your AR and you if your AR is at 30, if your AR is paying right now on time, if everybody’s paying you on time, and then tariff starts slowing everything up for for a $500,000 AR, if it’s 30 days late, it’s $5,000 that you lose. Wow. So that’s how many widgets more do you have to sell? Well, whatever, because people sell everything, how many more widgets do you have to sell to make up that $5,000 that you’re going to lose? Well, and
Thea Dudley
I don’t think people put it in those terms. You know, it’s, Hey, this is like, take insulation. It’s made here in the US. And so we’re like, okay, we feel pretty safe if we’re doing insulation, or we sell insulation or install it. But what happens? You know, the steel for those buildings come from somewhere. We’re not able to produce it all here. So there’s, it’s all. It’s so interconnected. And so that’s the second point. Was tariffs driving suppliers to raise prices and shorten payment terms. Well, just back to what you were saying. Banks have tightened up, and everybody’s kind of holding their breath to see. I mean, I’ve looked at the news this morning, and it’s, you know, the big China and the US are talking about tariffs. And, hey, they’re, they’re working on it. And I’m using air quotes because do I think they’ll get something worked out? Yes, but for how, to your point, how long?
Maureen Brennan
Well, right now they have a 90 day moratorium on it, and that’s about it, so nobody really knows what’s going on. So
Thea Dudley
everybody’s kind of holding their breath on it. And so, you know, one of the things that it this article called out was there are several factors that can affect your cash flow, and it’s your AR management, your credit policies, your accounts payable, financing decisions, inventory levels and. Investments, and who knows what your suppliers are going to do. That’s why we talked about checking out your vendors. Are they going to start shortening their terms? And how does all that roll out?
Maureen Brennan
Well, one of the big things that you can do is you should, you should keep an eye on the DBT, the days beyond terms of how your customers are paying. And the big thing I believe in is monitoring. You should be monitoring your accounts. You should be watching that DBT, and even if it only changes by two or three days, you need to find out why. Why are they changing? Are they not getting the information from their suppliers that they need? Or are they, you know, are they just slowing down? Are they not getting paid? So you have to go back, and you have to think about all that while you’re, you know, keeping an eye on your accounts, because you know the, you know, those one or two days and all of a sudden slip into five or six, and then seven or eight, nine or 10. Next thing you know, you know you’re trying your DSO is dropping, and you’re trying to figure out why on earth you’re not making the money that you were making before.
Thea Dudley
Well, I think to your point, then you start digging in, and pretty soon you’re, you’re digging into, okay, if, if my days beyond terms are ticking up by a couple days, let’s say it goes up two or three days, I need to start digging into that AR to see, okay, who’s driving this? Who are my culprits? Is it everybody? Is it a certain segment of my business? Is it my larger accounts that now are kind of holding onto their money because they’re holding their breath so they’re not paying as quick as they used to? Who do I need to talk to? How do I dive into it? And so monitoring that, and I can almost hear credit managers cringing and saying, Look, I’m already so, you know, stressed by, you know, getting orders out the door and getting money collected. And now there’s this other layer to it. It’s like, okay, there’s always another layer to it. I’ve never worked in credit where it wasn’t like there was some doom that was hanging over us, but there’s,
Maureen Brennan
but there’s all you know, most of your credit reporting agencies out there have some kind of monitoring tool, which is you can and you would only be notified if there is a change. So it’s not like you gotta pull every report every day. They’ll notify you if there’s a change, and that’s what you need to do
Thea Dudley
well. And I think setting those for the one of the other big challenges in our industry is we still have so many, you know, lumber material yards that aren’t using credit reporting tools. And I’ve preached this to the point where they’re like, I know they think I own stock in like all of you, but it’s, it’s that whole thing of, I want to know who I’m doing business with on a broader level. Besides the three trade references you give me.
Maureen Brennan
Everybody has three trade references that they pay. They always do. I mean, no matter what, even when times get tough, you’re still going to pick three and you’re going to make sure you pay them on time, so that when you need to get credit, you can use those three references. Remember, I’ve been down this road for 100 years
Thea Dudley
Well, and that’s the so when you’re, when you’re watching it, and you’re, you’re reporting, and you’re also pulling reports, you set that dashboard monitor. Now you don’t have to, you know, if I start seeing stuff, dive in, I don’t have to be digging in my own data to try to figure out, okay, who’s behind stuff, who is not paying me. You know, specific it comes up. And I can have it daily, weekly, monthly, however you want to do it. So the tools are out there. We just have to get better at using them. And you know, when there was only, like, one guy in town, you know, the one horse, then that was the the pricing was, was very but little hard to swallow, but there are, like you said, so many choices, and there’s somebody to fit your needs. So the third part of this, this article, number three, was tariffs reduce profitability for exporters. Well, yeah, that money’s coming from somewhere. So as that’s going through, I don’t think anybody’s, everybody’s just going to pass it on to the next guy, which just, sooner or later, the buck stops with somebody, you know, somebody’s not going to have a chair when the music stops, everybody loses, right,
Maureen Brennan
right? And that’s that’s going down the road. I mean, that it that’s, again, you have to monitor what you’re doing and keep an eye on everybody and making sure they’re doing things, you know, you bring that up, but, you know, I was at a conference the other day, and I heard a funny story. There’s an airline out there that was going to take they got five new airplanes. So those airplanes, they would have had a $20 million tariff per plane. So what the company did was they flew the planes to Japan, loaded them up with people, and then flew them to the US, so that when the airline took got their planes, those planes are no longer new, which meant they no longer had to pay a tariff.
Thea Dudley
Which on one hand, I’m thinking, Oh, my God, that’s brilliant. And then I’m like, I. Yeah, okay, now we’re just finding ways around stuff. Because, you know, I, we’re, we’re dealing with this hot mess, so I can’t be mad at the company. I’m just, I’m just angry at the whole situation where it’s like, I get, I want, I want us to be able to have a more level playing field. But it’s, it’s just, it makes you have to be a little more creative where the the fourth point of this article was tariffs disrupt global supply chains, and that’s a perfect example of it. If, if the if they had to pay the the stiff tariffs on it. Well, now if I fly, either personally or company. What’s that going to do to my airline ticket cost?
Maureen Brennan
Right? They gotta, they gotta. They gotta recoup that money somehow, with with the tariffs, with everything, with the tariffs going on, and, you know, the not knowing of what’s going on in the in the in the world today, a lot of your fi, a lot of your publicly traded companies have pulled their financial forecasts,
Thea Dudley
which I found really fun. When you and I were talking about that, I found that just I wanted to started to say funny, but it’s really not. It’s you’re pulling your forecast because you’re so uncomfortable that you don’t even want to put those numbers out there, because you really don’t know which way to go. So even watching economists. I think I’ve watched like, four different ones in the last 30 days, and every one of them is just like the only consistency is inconsistency, right?
Maureen Brennan
Gloom and doom and doom. Nobody, nobody knows. Nobody knows where they’re going. At this conference I was at, I listened to The Economist, and it’s like they have no idea where anything’s going and where we’re going to be in a year. And they can’t they, you know, they haven’t had these issues. I think the one guy said, since the 80s, Oh, wow.
Thea Dudley
So there’s, there’s not a whole lot of people that are still in the in in the industries that we’re talking about that have had that experience. They’ve either retired or they’re getting ready to retire, and a lot of the the younger generations that have come in haven’t had that. And so you’re, you’re looking to try to find out, okay, how do I deal with this? And you know that cash flow pieces, so I don’t want to just have us talk about all this is super negative. It’s like, yeah, we’re dealing with tariffs, and that’s a drag. But what I did like my favorite part of this article, and I printed it out, and I highly recommend, you know, everybody follow the link and go read it for themselves, because it was just a phenomenal story, how to protect yourself and your cash flow. And there was six points that came up. And I, you know, Maureen, I want us to dig into these, because these were really good. I really loved these six points. And some of them seem like, you know, normal business things that we should be doing, but we get complacent. Money’s been really good. We haven’t had to, you know. But now the last couple years, you know, ever since we’re coming out of COVID, you know, we had that whole everybody’s Kumbaya, we’re in it together. And then we were in it together until we weren’t, and we weren’t in it anymore, when you weren’t paying me, and now suddenly we’re we’re not friends. So one of the things that it came up with was review the business credit report on every customer you work with, also a lot of your
Maureen Brennan
agencies now will do you know you can send your, your Arn, you can send or your just your customer listing. You can send it in, and they can send you back a list of like with the credit with the credit line on there, the score, things like that in an Excel spreadsheet, and you can compare that to what it was a month ago. So if you want to do that on a quarterly basis, you could do that, and it’d be a great way of just kind of doing a quick review of every credit report.
Thea Dudley
See, I really like that. I like one because I’m a lazy woman, so I want what’s the easiest, quickest way to be able to do this with the least amount of manual labor in it,
Maureen Brennan
right, right? And that’s that is, that is the easiest way. And then you can just, you can just add it each each quarter, and then you can watch what’s going on with your scores. And then that way you’d be able to tell if anything’s going down, or if companies are really making changes.
Thea Dudley
Well, the other part that it came up with, you know that was in here. And you know, aside from days beyond terms, also look at the legal filings we did, I think it was last year on the LBM monthly webinars, we did a breakdown of how to read a credit report. And you know, a lot of people that just look at the score you’re It’s such a waste. There’s so much data to mine in there. It’s like, I want to know what banks they’re doing business with. I want to know who their UCC filings are with. I want to know if they have any liens or judgments against them. I want all of that extra data too. Do they own? Do they lease? So all of those things come into play, and. Looking at that you’re, you’re able to look at that whole credit decision. So you know, one was make sure you have a credit report on everybody that you’re, you’re working with. Because what is our motto? Everybody pays you till they don’t. It’s like, yeah, that’s I’ve known them forever, Thea, they always pay us. It’s like, yeah, till they don’t. That’s how every lawsuit starts well,
Maureen Brennan
and if you’re if you’re a main supplier, they’re going to pay you right up until the end. So you will never know that there’s an issue. If you’re going by what’s going on in your in your AR, that’s a really good point. Yeah, until you look at the other ARS, you’re not going to have any idea. So if you’re a main supplier, they’re going to keep paying you. Keep paying you here to think, Oh, my God, everything’s great, and then, boom, you get hit with the you get the bankruptcy filing.
Thea Dudley
All right, I like when you go to the credit associations, like the the trade, trade credit groups, and you’re like, Well, I’m getting paid, and everyone else is, well, I’m not getting paid. And you’re either feeling like I am so lucky, or, Oh, I am just like, one phone call away from them not paying me anymore. Well, let me,
Maureen Brennan
you know, I have a story about that, and this happened years ago. This was when cell phones first came out,
Thea Dudley
Was it the big brick?
Maureen Brennan
Yeah it was a pretty big one. Oh, God. So I was monitoring the metal supply group. And so the one lady came in, and she owned the metal company, and she came in a little bit late, and she’s, Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so late. She goes, we got this big, major sale. She says, we’re loading up the trucks for the guy right now. And somebody just happened to say, who was it? And she said, Who the name of the company was. And two people in the group said, how did they pay you? And she goes with a check. They said, Oh, they said, we’ve got bounce checks from them. This lady is going give me a phone. Give me a phone. Give me a phone. And she grabbed my phone out of my hand, and she called her office, and she said, unload those trucks. Unload those trucks. But that’s my how great a credit group is story, because that actually did happen, and she saved herself a ton of money, and they were a smaller metal supply house, so they that would have really hurt them.
Thea Dudley
Well, yeah, that would hurt one of our lumber yards, you know, say they’re a one or two lumber yard locate, you know, locations and something, they take a big hit on something, you know, that, which is another reason I’m so loving on tech and the payment portal thing, where it’s like, have them go in. Let’s do an ACH. Let’s do a, you know, let me get it out of your bank account as quickly as possible. Because you know that that whole, let me write you a check. I’m like, Dude, I don’t even know you. It’s like, I’ve never seen you before. You’re rolling up here at no credit people are usually the least trusting group of people in any given room, where salesmen are, like, everybody’s Awesome. Well, no, there maybe they are, but I gotta, I gotta, I gotta see, I gotta see your green money. Let’s see what we’re doing here.
Maureen Brennan
Yeah, never trust anybody till you have cash in hand.
Thea Dudley
I know that whole I’m gonna write you a check. I You just rolled up here. I don’t know you,
Maureen Brennan
You have to remember, a sale is not a sale until it is paid.
Thea Dudley
Yeah, we say that all the time. And, you know, we get the your your jaded, your cynical, and and sales people say it, and company presidents and CFOs and everybody says that. And, and then we’re faced with that hard business decision of, well, the sales right there, he’s, he’s going to be good for it. I really, you know, I’ve got to feel this guy. I’ve known him forever. It’s like, Honey, I don’t care if you gave birth to him. No, you. I need to get paid for this job. So unless we’ve got some financials or you’ve got a credit report strapped to your forehead. I don’t know you. I know, and I’m a salesperson,
Thea Dudley
I know, but you’re a credit sales person, which puts you in a whole different category. You’re, you’re, you’re a special breed. Maureen, the second thing the article said, you know that I loved, because I loved all, all six of these items. It’s do an in depth analysis of your customers historical payment data. And that was, you know, it told you exactly how to do it, because most, most credit managers were like, Yeah, I don’t know what you want me to do with that. Look closely at the days beyond terms trends and then their outstanding bills by invoice for the most recent 12 months. And I know that sounds like a lot of work, but that’s again, where that monitoring thing can come in and save yourself some some time there. And if you have a payment portal, they might have a dashboard that you can utilize for that, or, you know, your credit reporting service. I you know, I don’t know, most ERPs aren’t set up for that, but. But you never know some, some people surprise me all the time, but with what they find in there. So I the in depth analysis. I know it’s a it sounds like a lot of work, but try to make your AI, your tech work for you most,
Maureen Brennan
most of your credit reporting, most of your credit reporting companies will give you a year long, a year history of the DBT, the days beyond terms and also of the score. So you can go back for a year and chart what the score has been for the entire year. Same thing with the DBT, you can go back and chart what the DBT has been for the whole year. Okay,
Thea Dudley
now I know that this is pre recorded, so I can almost hear some credit people or CFOs going, so how do I contact you and get that. It’s like, well, look at everybody’s in business. You’re going to have to be a customer of whichever you know, flavor of your choices between the credit bureaus, whether it’s, you know, credit safe, Experian, Equifax, you know, one of the credit management associations done in Bradstreet. You either are, you know, I highly, highly recommend that you, you know, dump your data into them, so that your good customers get credit, but yet, your your guys that maybe aren’t, you’re also helping out your industry that way. And then you, you get those tools where you’re able to do the monitoring. And that comes with, Hey, here’s, here’s my contract. And not Am I getting credit reports, but I’m getting this dashboard that helps me make better decisions. And no, I am not contracted with with any I have no deal with credit safe. We are just Maureen’s just a friend, and I happen to pick up her stuff all the time and read because there’s so much good you guys really do put out a lot of good articles that are very practical, and I appreciate that. Oh, thank you. Well, sure, because I get a lot of free, free articles that I can read and go, Oh, this is a big deal for us. This is, this is awesome. The third thing was, speak to customers regularly, not just when you’re talking about payments. And we did a using your credit powers for good session earlier this year. And that’s where that knowing your customer comes in, having relationships, and you you have to have those relationships with your customers, especially your big guys, that if one of them tanks, I can take you with them. No one’s going under for five grand. But if you know, you throw some more zeros on the end of that, it becomes a lot bigger issue for you,
Maureen Brennan
and a lot and, you know, they it’s same thing with sales, though, um, you know, you you know, it’s all about relationship. Everything’s about relationship. And so if you have a relationship with your customer, when you’re in, when you are calling for money or there’s a problem, they’re more apt to give you more information, because now you have that relationship, and they feel comfortable talking to
Thea Dudley
you. That’s true. You know, if I just call out of the blue and say, you know, hey, this is Thea, and they’re like, Yeah, I don’t we’re back to the I don’t know you. So, like, I’m not going to tell you my deep, dark fears of what’s going on in my company, I don’t know you, and I don’t want to get cut off. I don’t know how if you’ll work with me. I don’t know anything about how you you go to market, how you do business, because this is the first time I’m ever talking to you,
Maureen Brennan
right? And if they know you, they may say, Hey, look at we’re struggling a little bit right now. Can you bear with us? Can you give us you know, more terms, things like that, and then you’ll learn more information. Which
Thea Dudley
brings us to number four, segment, your customer portfolio by payment behaviors. I really like this one. This is kind of fun. Yeah, a lot of your a lot of
Maureen Brennan
your agencies, will also give you where, if you share your AR with them, they’ll give you a portfolio of, you know, screening back. And in that you can say, okay, these are all my customers that are in the like, the the A’s, these are all the customers that are in the B’s, these are all the customers that are in the C’s. And then that way you can have all those customers segmented off. And then this way you can concentrate your efforts, you know, going from the back to the front. Rather than concentrating your efforts on the A’s, you can concentrate your efforts on the D’s and the C’s and then move, move the other way. Instead of, you know, going the other and keeping yourself
Thea Dudley
sane and with and with money. Yeah, you know, putting, putting your resources, you know, it’s like, Hey, we’re gonna really do a blitz call on all of, like, our D’s and E’s, the A’s, I’m not worried about It’s this. It’s everybody from, like, a C on that. I want to make sure we’re touching and we’re getting in there and we’re finding out what’s going on. And if we need to cut somebody off, or do we need to try to work out some sort of payment strategy? You know what’s going on with them? How are these tariffs impacting their business? Are they truly tariff impacted? Or are they just not run their business well? Because there’s it’s just like with COVID, every every contractor I know was very i. Yeah, well, you know, it’s COVID, and this is happening, and we’re all kind of okay. It’s like, yeah, okay, you can’t use that. Okay, tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. Like, well, maybe you’re not, you’re not truly transparent or honest with yourself. It’s here’s where we are now. You’re just not very good at running your back office. You’re not doing your billing correctly, you’re not collecting your money. That’s the kind of stuff I want to know. Are you, are you truly struggling because of some domino effect, or is it because you’re just kind of slack ass in your habits?
Maureen Brennan
Well And right now, especially in the building industry, you’re going to know, if it’s you’re going to know because you you the builders are picking up right now, everything is starting to really go for the builders. So if they’re slacking way behind, then you got to turn around. You got to say, Whoa, wait a minute here. What’s going on? Because you should be growing, you should be moving. You should be shaking. If you’re not, you know, and you know, if nobody else is having an issue getting lumber, then we know you’re really not having an issue getting lumber. So what is going on?
Thea Dudley
True? And that’s where I point to those back office processes. You know, some of these guys are so great at building the business and getting those jobs or, you know, getting the contracts, and they don’t look at growing that back office piece of it and figuring out if you don’t bill on time incorrectly, if you don’t collect your money. And I’m so overhearing, you know, some of these folks come up and say, Well, I don’t want to look like I need the money. I don’t really care if you think I need it or not. I pay me on time. My materials got there on time. Pay me on time, or come up with the reason why you can’t. And it better not because, you know you were busy today, number five, adjust payment terms when necessary. I like this. It goes back to the conversation we just had. You know, Maureen, where we’re talking about, know, your customer, get in there. You know if, if someone’s doing government work, you know they’re going to need 60 days. You know, it’s not, why are you giving them? You know? And I know we’re not talking about terms, but when you set terms correctly, know your business, know your business segment, know who you’re dealing with and who you’re going to market with.
Maureen Brennan
And you also might be, you also might be getting a lot of your supplier, your supply, from out of the country, and they may be having issues too. So that’s what that’s, you know, you may have to change some of your terms for some of those people, because they might not be getting what they need true.
Thea Dudley
I mean, that’s a good point.
Maureen Brennan
And your stuff might be getting held up at the port, you know, going through tariff stuff and going through all that information. So then you’re gonna, you’re gonna be stuck with longer terms, and then you’re gonna have to stretch out your terms. Your terms, because you’re not gonna be able to give the product to them right on time. That’s why it’s also not just an idea to keep an eye on just your customers, but also keep an eye on your suppliers. And
Thea Dudley
we touched on that early on, but that that’s a whole nother. You know, piece of this puzzle is your smaller suppliers, that may be very specialty that are bringing stuff in, or everything that they sell, they have to bring in from somewhere else. How does that impact? And are they able to survive it? And how are they dealing with with tariffs, and if they already have quoted pricing to you now, how are they going back and renegotiating that? Or have they? Are they just, hey, I’m going to suck it up and see how this goes. There’s, that’s where I think that whole consistency is has just been inconsistent so far, this for the last year and a half.
Maureen Brennan
And also, again, monitor, monitor, monitor, your suppliers and see because if they’re, you know, they start, if their dbts start changing, then there’s something definitely going on. They want to get a heads up before all of a sudden they turn around say, You know what, we can’t get you the product. You need to build your biggest product this month. Well, then that makes you dead in the water, and you don’t want that to happen.
Thea Dudley
Final thing that the article came up with was make sure your own payment terms with suppliers is most effective, which, you know, you were just jumping ahead with vendors. Are your terms with your vendors in line with what’s happening in the business right now? Can they raise or shorten your terms? I mean, can you make an adjustment so, you know, just room,
Maureen Brennan
do you have room to make? Do you have room to make any adjustments? I mean, can you afford to make any adjustments?
Thea Dudley
And that’s only something each company has to kind of look at and figure out on their own. And I just, I thought this was such a timely article, and it I like when somebody brings me a problem and they bring me solutions. It’s like, just don’t lob your your little lbs at me and go, here. It’s, hey, here’s what I’m seeing. Tariffs are causing us to, you know, until it all gets worked out, until something solid, and not just for 90 days. Because I think that’s just band aiding and kicking the can down the road, which I get you want to keep business going. Going, but it still has companies kind of up in knots. It’s
Maureen Brennan
just like all the companies pulling their financial forecasts, because 90 days isn’t going to be enough to tell you what’s going to happen till the end of the year, so they’re going to pull their financial forecast because they just don’t know. Oh,
Thea Dudley
and that is, I mean, I think it’s wise on their part, but it does cause a lot of unrest. It’s, it does get to be very tiresome, and that’s, you’re constantly on edge and you’re constantly watching. But I love that there were solutions. And so these six things were amazing. But the the DBT is probably some of the most valuable data. And, you know, monitoring those accounts. Maureen, was there anything else? I mean, you’ve been in this game a really long time, you know? It’s, it’s, we’re just going to go with over 40 years, because at some point I just stopped counting. I feel like I’m I feel like I’m reporting this in dog years, where it’s like, is this really? How long we’ve been doing this job?
Maureen Brennan
We started at eight.
Thea Dudley
I like that, but you’ve seen a lot of stuff, and it’s like every decade seems to have, you know, whether it’s a recession or, you know, COVID or, you know, some some economic upheaval, and just being prepared for it. And the tools are always pretty much the same.
Maureen Brennan
Well, the tools have really grown, though, because in the past, you didn’t have as much monitoring. You didn’t have as much you know, all the data wasn’t so freewheeling. It was, you know, back in the dark ages, it was okay, you know, you pulled the credit report out of a file cabinet and you made some phone calls. Now you just pull it up on a computer and it’s all up to date. And, you know, all the credit reporting agencies are constantly updating data all day long, every day. So I mean, there’s a lot more, there’s a lot more data that’s at your fingertips. And the problem is, is a lot of people don’t use it, and they have to. They have to use it. It’s not it’s not that expensive. Most of the companies give you, you know, monitoring with your tools, it’s usually pretty free or it’s pennies. So you might as well use it, because in the long run, it is going to save you. If it saves you one account, one account, it was worth every dime that you spent on it. I
Thea Dudley
really appreciate you being here today. If, if someone wants to get a hold of you, how do they reach you?
Maureen Brennan
Call credit safe and ask for me. Or they can reach me by email, which is my name. Maureen.brennan@creditsafe.com
Thea Dudley
Okay, and we’ll have that in the the link below. So if you didn’t catch it, you don’t have to keep, like, going back, you know, 10 seconds back on the on the podcast. But I really appreciate it. I loved this article. I thought it was brilliant. So thank you for being willing to come on. Are there any parting things that you want to tell credit people or CFOs out there to watch for? Monitor,
Maureen Brennan
that’s I read that after, after the article. That’s all that kept coming into my mind was monitor, monitor, monitor.
Thea Dudley
All right, that wraps another edition of LBM talks credit I appreciate you joining us. We hope that you enjoyed this episode. If there’s anything that you want to see us talk about in the future, please let me know thea@creditoverlord.com or you can shoot something over to LBM journal, and they’ll flip it over to me until next time. Keep watching that AR and what was the word of the day Monitor.
