Blog Lingo + Definitions

Throughout the blog posts you may see some terms that you haven’t heard before, maybe you use terms of your own in your office, so we decided to put a list together of the most frequently used terms in our posts so that you can understand what we’re saying. If you ever have any questions about a term that you don’t quite understand, and it’s not on the list, please email us at info@connection2collections.com!

Please check back regularly for updates.

1. Posting Days – Throughout a month, most firms or agencies will only post payments Monday through Friday, occasionally on a Saturday. So we will use the term posting days and usually say something like “There are only 20 posting days this month.” which means that there are four 5 day weeks where payments will be posted. This matter because if it doesn’t get posted, it doesn’t usually count for the day/week/month.
2. Mail Days – These are days during the month that mail is delivered. Mail days are important in the industry because although a majority of payments are received over the phone, a lot of law firms get post judgment payments from the sheriff via mail. Mail days are an important part of the business. For example, if there’s a holiday recognized by the post office, but not by the firm/agency, you won’t get the additional push of collections from the mail, so it’s 100% up to the collectors to get payments over the phone!
3. EOD – This is short for “End-Of-Day”.
4. EOM – This is short for “End-Of-Month”. Usually used as a replacement for closeout, or simply to state the end of the month.
5. Closeout – This is the last day of the collector month. This is the biggest day for collectors and is not just a day, but an event! This is the day to hit your goal, or hopefully already be there!
6. SIF – Short for “Settled-In-Full”, “Settlement-In-Full”.
7. PIF – Short for “Paid-In-Full”, or “Payment-In-Full”.
8. PPA – Short for “Payment Plan Active”.
9. Payment Plan – These are annuity accounts where the consumer is paying month over month on their account.
10. Right Party Contact (RPC) – This is a term used when speaking to the actual debtor.
11. PDC – This is short for “Post Dated Check”. These are checks made over the phone or sent to an office that are dated for a future date.
12. Check By Phone – This is when a collector takes a payment over the phone, it could be made for that day, or for a future date.
13. Terrible Tuesday – In the industry, Tuesdays can be BAD. With the weekend mail coming in on Monday, Tuesday’s mail is very minimal. Not only that, but people are just getting into the grove of their work week and hard to get a hold of. These are known as tough collection days.
14. Gross $ Collected – This is the total amount brought in by a; collector, agency, firm, group and it represents the actual dollar amount without taking out any fee/cost/commission.
15. Life of an Account – This represents the time frame of an account from when it went into collections until it either paid off or closed for other reasons. There are many different stages within the life of an account, including but not limited to; Pre-Charge Off Collections, Post-Charge Off Collections, Agency Collections, Legal Collections, Post Judgment Collections, Debt Purchaser Collections.
16. New Accounts – These represent accounts that the collector has only had for 30 days or less. These accounts don’t have to be “New” to the agency, or “New” in terms of the age of the debt or account, this is simply accounts that are new to the collector. This shouldn’t be confused with “New Placements” which are different.
17. New Placements – These are the accounts that are new to the company. These accounts usually have a “life” of 30 days or less at a new agency or firm.

 Last Update: 09/15/2014