Accounts to watch and negative residuals

Every month a few accounts slip: one stops processing, one starts costing you money, one halves in two months. Accounts to watch finds them for you, so you and your reps can call before the merchant is gone. Admins only.

Where

• Dashboard: the Accounts to watch card, under What moved. It shows four columns, one per reason, with the count in each heading and the first four accounts underneath. The card always shows; in a quiet month it says there is nothing to watch.
• Explorer: go to Explorer, open the Merchants tab and pick Accounts to watch at the top right. This is the full list. Each column heading on the Dashboard card opens it, filtered to that reason.

Both use the month picked at the top of the page.

The four reasons

Each account gets one reason, checked in this order:

Residual here is the account's Gross Revenue. An account at exactly $0 counts as stopped only if it processed in the last three months, so long-closed accounts do not fill the list. An account that has never processed but is charged fees shows under Losing money from its first month, marked Never processed. When a processor does not report volume, its accounts are judged on residual alone.

Reading the list

• New marks an account that joined the list this month. Otherwise you see how many months in a row it has had the same reason.
• New accounts come first, then the biggest drop.
• The figure on the right shows the change: residual over the last three months, or volume where it is marked Vol.
• Unassigned means no agent is on the account, so nobody will call unless you do. See Assign an agent.

The full list in Explorer

The Explorer view opens with four figures for the month:

• Accounts to watch, with how many are new this month
• Below zero this month: what the accounts with a negative residual cost you
• Residual lost: how much less these accounts earn now than two months ago
• Unassigned: accounts with no agent to follow up

Below them, click a reason to filter, or pick an agent to see only their accounts. The table shows three months of volume and residual for each account. Use Export for Excel or CSV, for example to send each rep their own list.

Negative residuals

The Negative residuals view, also under Explorer's Merchants tab, answers a different question: where did you lose money over the last 3, 6 or 12 months?

• It lists every account that went below zero in any month of that window, one column per month, worst first.
• Its figures: Accounts below zero, Total lost, Negative every month, and No volume (accounts negative only because of fees while not processing).
• Agents see their own negative months on My Accounts in the agent portal, in their commission.

Which one to use: Accounts to watch is this month's call list. Negative residuals is the history, for finding accounts that keep costing you money, such as one priced below cost.

Not the same as Merchants to watch

Book health has its own Merchants to watch list: merchants the processor has closed but that are still earning, and merchants that have gone dormant. Use it to see where the book is heading over the year, and Accounts to watch for this month's movements.

What agents see

Agents get their own Accounts to watch in the agent portal: a card on their home page and the full list on My Accounts, under Your book. It covers only the merchants assigned to them, and it reads only their own commission from published months, never the merchant's residual or volume, so their rate cannot be worked out from it.

Because agents do not see volume, their reasons differ slightly:

Their Negative months list on My Accounts stays: it is their version of Negative residuals, in their commission.