The receipt is especially convenient for the customer, as it shows exactly how the payment is to be credited. For the same reason, it is equally convenient for the cashier. All of the numbered receipts must be accounted for; if one is spoiled, it must be turned in, which provides an effective check on the collector. =Mail-Order Installment Collections.= An increasing volume of installment business is now done by mail. An established principle of the mail-order business is that customers must be given an opportunity to inspect the goods before they can be expected to make a binding contract for their purchases. Beginners in the mail-order field are quite likely to look on this as an impractical plan, fearing the loss of goods, but experience soon teaches them that it is the only plan on which the business can be successfully conducted. When experienced mail-order men, with the courage to try out a new idea, experimented on the plan of allowing customers to return goods, they found that the more liberal the offer, the more business they did. This led to the giving of an absolute guaranty, offering to ship goods on approval with the privilege of return for any reason within certain time limits. As the fear of loss of goods became less pronounced, it was argued that more liberal terms of payment could be granted with safety--if goods could be sold successfully on the installment plan to local customers, why not by mail? A trial proved the plan to be practical, and now many articles are sold by mail on the installment or easy payment plan. Goods are even shipped without an advance payment, either the goods or the first payment to be returned within a certain time limit. In selling goods by mail on the installment plan, it is necessary to secure a binding order, in which the customer agrees to return the goods within a certain number of days, or make the payments as specified, with an agreement that title to the goods shall be held by the seller until all payments have been made according to contract. The contract must also give the seller the right to recall the goods whenever the customer shall fail to make a single payment as agreed. The success of the mail-order installment business depends largely on the manner in which collections are handled. Not having the advantage of personal contact with the customer, the collector is obliged to depend on the knowledge of the man which he gains from references and the correspondence of the customer. But the shrewd collector soon learns to read his man from the general tone of the correspondence, and sometimes from the absence of communications from the debtor. When he has learned the character of the man, he can handle each account independently; until then, he is obliged to follow the same line of action in all cases, depending on the law of averages to prove the correctness of his theories. [Illustration: Fig. 29. Loose-Leaf Ledger for Mail-Order Collections]