Many companies issue invoices in the same amounts, to the same customers at the same addresses for years. These situations typically arise for maintenance or subscription products. Through the natural attrition of customer employees and changes in customer locations, it is inevitable that the contact information that worked the month or year before for the last billing is no longer correct. This results in returned mail and delays while the accounting or sales departments determine to whom the invoice should now be sent.
A good solution is to print out the list of invoices to be sent in the near future and have the sales staff review the list for errors prior to printing the invoice. The sales staff typically has the most current contact information, and so is most likely to spot outdated information.
The primary difficulty is the unwillingness of the sales staff to assist in the invoice review process. One can meet with the sales staff to personally impress upon them the importance of this task. An alternative is to only verify with the sales staff the contact information for the largest invoices, thereby keeping the allocation of their valuable time to this task to a minimum. A better approach is to grant the sales staff a small commission based on the cash collected from recurring invoices. By doing so, they will see a more immediate need to ensure the accuracy of all contact information.