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 re