AR & Collections Analyst

Serving the needs of all families with young children, Carter’s Inc. is the largest North American apparel retailer exclusively for babies and young children, encompassing Carter’s, OshKosh B’gosh, Skip*Hop and Little Planet brands. Meaningful work, constant learning, genuine people, and a community guided by core values that promote inclusion and innovation is in everything we do. There are many reasons to build your career at Carter's.

how you’ll make an impact:

The Accounts Receivable & Collection Analyst position focuses on collecting outstanding invoices, reconciling complex disputes for our domestic and global customers; managing and preventing the continuation of outstanding past due to receivables while ensuring customer satisfaction and proactive sales engagement.

This role typical reports into the Accounts Receivable and Claims Manager, and is based in our Buckhead office in our hybrid work environment.

Accounts Receivable & Collections - 40%

• Manage accounts receivable portfolio including collections, and chargebacks/disputes as assigned by manager.
• Arrange and manage customer payment plans and negotiations; consult with the Manager of Credit & Collections including legal for severe and critical past due accounts.
• Reconciliation and performance analysis of customer accounts providing KPI metrics to senior management, preparation of ad-hoc reporting, including but not limited to customer contracts, dispute resolutions, current aging status and/or others, as assigned by management.
• Analyze research, and resolve past due items maintaining collection standard of 90% current aging status for assigned accounts; liaison with customer contacts via telephone, email, and customer web portals to collect data from various customer locations, resolve payment issues, facilitate collections and analyze credit exposure.
• Access and navigate customer websites/portals to retrieve invoice payment information, claim copies and/or to resolve disputed / unpaid balances. Look for opportunities to streamline the process by partnering with IT and the vendor community.
• Maintain detailed documentation of collection activity, including customer contacts, follow up on open items and account resolution status in SAP.
• Serve as SAP Collections SME to provide training and support to internal business partners, including Order Management Logistics (OML), Sales and Distribution Center (DC) personnel to resolve operational and compliance issues.
• Ability to track and manage various projects simultaneously in a high volume retail environment.
• Help develop sound, acceptable credit policies while challenging existing processes. Take the initiative to identify areas of opportunity and innovative ways of using the SAP financial system.

Dispute Resolution - 40%

• Analyze, maintain and resolve all dispute cases in SAP. Identify root causes of customer chargebacks, update cases with gathered documentation and collaborate with internal or external business partners on solutions to remedy issues.
• Research and manage all customer chargebacks, including retrieval of documentation and coding/payments from 3rd party systems. Input all dispute documentation in SAP within two weeks of posting and follow through to final resolution.
• Assist in the preparation of month-end reporting including chargeback reporting to management. Significant emphasis will be placed on minimizing the number of chargebacks through timely research and internal partnership to drive process improvements.
• Analyze and research high volume payment discrepancies and recommend process improvements to Accounts Receivable & Collections Manager, where applicable.

Communication - 10%

• Significant communication with internal business partners to drive company initiatives and maintain/improve accounts receivable portfolio performance
• Effective communication with external partners (i.e. wholesale customers) to ensure account collections and dispute management cases are closed timely.
• Communication with both internal and external auditors to ensure the financial integrity of our records.

Internal Controls - 10%

• Maintain accurate and complete records of collection activity to meet all internal control requirements.
• Participate in special projects, assist management in quarterly and year-end audits and perform other related duties as assigned.
• Understand and readily support company corporate business practices, policies, internal controls and procedures designed to create value or minimize risk.

We’d Love to hear from you if: (Requirements section)

Must have:

• Excellent written and verbal communication
• 1-3 years’ experience in accounts receivable and collections with the ability to reconcile credits & debits
• Commitment to customer service, with the ability to build productive relationships with internal and external business partners.

Preferred skills and experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Accounting or Finance highly preferred and/or combination of school and equivalent related work experience.
• Prior experience working with a significant considerable number of customer accounts requiring thoughtful analysis and communication to resolve open items and disputes
• Experience working in global share services settings preferred.
• Experience working with prior mainframe ERP systems (SAP a plus)
• Preferred experience to have a full understanding of the entire order to cash process from sales orders to cash application. Preference to possess the ability to manage significant customer relationships by providing thorough customer analysis reports.
• Preferred ability to interpret and downloading large sets of data after downloading from different source systems.
• Advance skills of Excel working with pivot tables, vlookup’s, macros, graphs, Word and PowerPoint preferred.
• Ability to identify root cause issues, offer possible solutions and innovation and/or next course of action for customer chargebacks/disputes and reconciliations.
• Excellent negotiation skills, ability to gain trust and confidence with customers, management, and peers using tact and diplomacy.
• Ability to work in a cross-functional team collaboration
• Must be highly organized and deadline-oriented excellent time management skills.

OUR Team Members:

• Lead Courageously: Have a strong sense of personal values that align with our Company values
• Collaborates Broadly: Build cooperation, trust, and thrive in a consensus driven environment
• Customer Focus: Proactively seek opportunities to leverage data and fact-based insights to serve customers and/or internal clients
• Drive Growth: Set aggressive goals and implement plans precisely
• Cultivates Innovation:  Respectfully challenge the "we’ve always done it this way" mentality and explore new ways to achieve desired outcomes

Make a career at Carter’s:

• Career Development: Success starts from within, and we have several paths from which you can choose to enhance your career evolution. From Carter’s University to Toastmasters to mentorship programs and more, we encourage you to utilize these tools to elevate your professional prowess.

NOTE:  This job description is not intended to be all-inclusive. The duties described may be changed or reassigned at the discretion of management, and the employee may be required to perform duties that are not listed in the job description.

Carters is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, or any other status protected by federal, state, or local law.