Recoupa Operator Handbook

The complete reference for running collection and sales operations in Recoupa - what each screen does, which role can do what, and how the automatic bits (follow-ups, commission, statuses) actually work.

What Recoupa is

Recoupa is a workspace for running two connected books of business for a debt-recovery agency:

• Collection - the recovery book. Principal clients hand you overdue invoices owed by their customers (debtors). You call debtors, log outcomes, track cheques, record payments, and your agency earns a commission on what's collected.
• Sales - the new-business book. Prospects come in (imported from a spreadsheet or entered by hand), get worked through outreach, and - once signed - get converted into a principal client, which then feeds the Collection book.

Every workspace is a tenant: one company's fully isolated data. Every client, debtor, invoice, prospect, and login belongs to exactly one tenant, and nobody ever sees another tenant's data - enforced on every single query, not just hidden in the menu.

Roles & permissions

Your role is shown next to your name in the sidebar. Menu items you can't use are hidden entirely.

Signing in & navigation

Sign in with the email and password your Owner or Manager gave you. There's no self-registration - accounts are created under Team. An inactive account, or an account on a deactivated tenant, can't sign in at all.

The sidebar is grouped: Overview (Dashboard), Collection (Calling Queue, Debtors, Disputes, Principal Clients, Payment Corrections), Sales (Pipeline, Outreach Queue, Prospects, Import Sheet), and Admin (Team, Tenants, Commission Rules, Audit Log) - each item only shown to roles allowed to open it.

Principal clients

These are the companies who hired your agency to recover money - not the companies who owe it. Owner/Manager create them with a name, optional contact details, and a default recovery commission % (starting at 10%, editable per client) that new invoices inherit unless overridden.

The list shows live rollups - debtor count, invoice count, receivable, and balance - computed straight from the invoices table, so they're always in sync. Only an Owner can delete a client, and doing so removes every debtor, invoice, and call log under it.

Master load (spreadsheet import)

From a client's row, Owner/Manager can upload a debtor + invoice spreadsheet (.xlsx, .xls, .csv). Headers are matched loosely - case and punctuation don't matter, and the header row can be anywhere in the first six rows. Recognized columns:

One row = one invoice - repeat the debtor's name and phone on every line for that debtor. Click Validate (dry run) first: it reports valid / duplicate / errored row counts without writing anything. Only once you're happy, click Commit N valid row(s). A debtor is matched to an existing one by phone number within that client; duplicate invoice numbers (in the file or already in the system) are always skipped.

Debtors - search, assign, manual leads

Filter by search text, status, client, and (for Owner/Manager) agent, including "Unassigned only" to find debtors nobody's working yet. Collectors only ever see their own assigned book here and in the queue.

Owner/Manager can also add a debtor by hand for a quick lead - but a manual lead has no invoices yet, so nothing is owed until you add one (or run Master Load). Payments always apply against a real invoice, never a lead total, so add the invoice before a collector tries to receipt money.

Calling queue

The collector's prioritized worklist: every active assigned debtor (not Declined, not Resolved), grouped into Overdue - call now, Due today, Upcoming, and No follow-up scheduled, sorted by follow-up date. Managers see the same grouping across every collector's book. An empty queue means nothing is assigned to you, or every assigned file is closed.

Debtor profile

Everything about one debtor lives on one page: summary tiles (total overdue, collected, remaining, next follow-up), the statement of account, cheques and payments side by side, the document vault, the call-logging form, and full call history - in that order, top to bottom.

Logging a call outcome

Every contact gets logged here - notes are required (up to 4,000 characters). Saving updates the debtor's status and automatically schedules the next follow-up:

Adding invoices

Owner/Manager can add one or more invoices from a debtor's profile. Enter the invoice number (unique per client), amount, invoice date, and due date. The commission % field pre-fills automatically from the ageing tier that matches how old the invoice already is - you can still edit it per invoice before saving, or click the field again to re-suggest it.

How commission works

Commission % lives on the invoice, not on the client or the ledger overall - it's inherited from the client's default, overridable per invoice, and overridable again by a Commission column in a spreadsheet import. When a payment is recorded, commission = payment amount × that invoice's commission %, computed once at the moment the payment is saved.

Cheques & post-dated cheques

Record a cheque as either Post-dated (PDC) or Current-date, with its number, bank, amount, cheque date, and - for PDCs - a maturity date. The Dashboard surfaces every PDC maturing within 7 days as an alert. Status moves through Pending → Deposited → Cleared (or Bounced). A cheque on its own is not a payment - recording the actual payment (optionally linked to that cheque, which marks it Cleared automatically) is what moves the balance.

Recording a payment

Pick an invoice with an outstanding balance greater than zero, an amount (can't exceed what's left on that invoice), a method, and optionally a cheque to link. Commission is calculated automatically from that invoice's %. The invoice status becomes Partial or Settled depending on whether anything is left.

Edits & payment corrections

Owner/Manager can edit a payment's amount directly from the debtor profile - balance and commission recalculate immediately, and it's captured in the audit log. Collectors don't get a direct edit button: instead they Request a correction (proposed amount + reason), which lands on the Payment Corrections page for a Manager or Owner to Approve (applies the new amount) or Reject. Never record a second payment to "fix" a mistaken one.

Document vault

Attach a document to a debtor (and optionally a specific invoice) with a type - Invoice, Contract, Correspondence, Supporting, Cheque copy, Delivery note, Purchase order, ID document, or Other. If real file storage isn't wired up on your deployment, log a file name / reference instead so the paper trail isn't lost.

Disputes

Every debtor currently in DISPUTED status shows up here with its reason - Pricing discrepancy, Missing POD / invoice, or Damaged goods - so it can be worked as a queue of its own. Client Portal logins see this page read-only, scoped to their own portfolio.

Sales pipeline

The Sales overview: active prospects, follow-ups due today, converted count, and total pipeline, plus a status breakdown and a feed of recent outreach. Sales Reps see only their own numbers; Owner/Manager see the whole book.

Import mastersheet (sales)

Owner/Manager upload a workbook of prospects - every sheet is read, and the sheet name is stored as the row's source. Recognized columns: Firm/Company/Client name/Name, Contact person/POC (a bare "Contact" column is treated as a phone number), Telephone/ Mobile/Phone, Email, Website/URL, Address/Location, Remarks/Notes. A row needs a firm (or contact) name plus at least one way to reach them. Preview first, then Import - optionally skipping firms that already exist, and optionally assigning every imported row to one rep.

Prospects & outreach

Log outreach with a channel (Call, Email, In person, WhatsApp) and a disposition; notes are required. Follow-up auto-schedules by disposition - No answer (+1 day), Contacted / interested (+2), Follow-up / negotiation (+3), Proposal sent (+5), Meeting scheduled (+7, or set the real meeting date as an override) - or leaves the queue entirely on Not interested. When a deal is signed, Owner/Manager click Convert to client, which creates the Principal Client record and drops straight into its Master Load screen so you can load the debtor invoices immediately.

Team (user management)

Owner can create any role; Manager can create Collector or Sales accounts only. A Client Portal account must be linked to exactly one principal client - that's the only portfolio it will ever see. Owner can change anyone's role (except their own) and activate/deactivate any account (except their own); Manager can only activate/deactivate Collector, Sales, and Client Portal accounts.

Tenants

Each tenant is one company's fully isolated workspace. Owner can create a new tenant (it starts empty, with sane default commission tiers, ready for you to add its first users) and deactivate a tenant - which immediately blocks every one of its users from signing in. You can't deactivate your own tenant.

Commission rules

Set the suggested commission % per ageing bucket (by minimum/maximum days past due). Leave the max blank for the final open-ended bucket. Changing a tier only affects invoices added after the change - existing invoices keep whatever % they were given.

Audit log

Every meaningful action - logins aside - is recorded here: who did what, to which record, and when. Treat it as the source of truth when reconciling a disagreement about who changed something.

Global field rules

• All money is two-decimal, never negative.
• Commission % is between 0 and 100.
• Required text fields can't be just blank spaces.
• An invoice number must be unique per principal client.
• Notes on a call outcome are always required - write enough that a colleague could pick up the file cold.

FAQ & common mistakes

Daily checklists