The Owner-and-Date Standard
The simplest way to make aged AR feel lighter and move faster
Aged AR gets heavy when accounts live in the gray area.
The note says “in process,” but nobody knows where.
The portal shows “received,” but nothing changes.
A task says “follow up,” but no one knows when.
That’s when teams start circling the same accounts.
Not because they don’t care.
Because they’re trying to reduce risk in a messy system.
A simple standard can remove a lot of that weight:
Every meaningful touch should produce an owner and a date.
Not as a nice-to-have. As the minimum for progress.
I call it the Owner-and-Date Standard.
What it means
If you submit something or take a key action, the account is not “safe” until you can answer:
- Who owns it now?
- When will it be worked (or when should we check again)?
That’s it.
Owner + date turns a vague status into a plan.
It turns “pending” into “scheduled.”
And it protects your team from doing the same work twice
Why this works (even when payers are slow)
You can’t control payer timelines.
But you can control uncertainty.
When you have an owner and a date:
- you stop calling too early
- you stop waiting too long
- you stop resending “just in case”
- you stop relying on memory or tribal knowledge
- you can hand the account to someone else without resetting it
Owner-and-date isn’t about being aggressive.
It’s about being clear.
The hidden problem with “follow up”
“Follow up” sounds responsible, but it’s not actionable.
It doesn’t tell you:
- what you’re following up on
- who should be contacted
- when the next attempt should happen
- what changes if there’s no movement
So the next person opens the account and starts over.
That’s the cost.
The two questions that change your follow-up
Here are the two questions that create the standard:
1) “Who owns this now?”
You’re looking for something specific:
- a department
- a queue name
- a team
- a person
- a reference to where it sits
Even “Appeals Intake Queue” is better than “in process.”
2) “When is it expected to be worked?”
You’re looking for:
- a date, or
- a turnaround range you can convert into a date
If they can’t give an exact date, ask for the range:
“What’s the typical turnaround — 3–5 business days, 7–10, or longer?”
Then you set your next follow-up date based on that.
That is how you stop random checking.
What to write (The Action-Ready Note version)
The Owner-and-Date Standard should show up in the record in one clear line.
Action-Ready Note format:
- Receipt: confirmed yes/no
- Owner: team/queue/person
- Work date: expected date or window
- Next step: what happens if it misses
Example:
Receipt: Confirmed documents visible (ref #54321)
Owner: Appeals Review Team
Work date: 5–7 business days
Next step: If no decision by 02/12, escalate via supervisor line
That’s enough to protect the account from resets.
A simple way to roll it out with your team
Don’t try to change everything at once.
Start with your highest-impact aged accounts.
This week’s standard:
For your top aged accounts, no touch counts unless it produces an owner and a date.
That’s not pressure.
It’s clarity.
And clarity is what reduces rework.
The empathy side: why teams feel better when this is consistent
When teams don’t have owner-and-date, they carry the account in their head.
They worry they’ll miss something.
They worry the payer will deny it because “we didn’t follow up enough.”
They worry leadership will ask for updates they can’t answer cleanly.
Owner-and-date reduces that mental load.
It’s one less thing people have to remember.
One less thing that forces restart work.
Aged AR will always require persistence.
But it should not require guessing.
The Owner-and-Date Standard helps you replace guessing with a simple plan.
At Zybex, we help teams build practical workflows like this so aged AR stops depending on memory and starts moving with proof. If you want the future posts in this series, sign up with your email using the form below.