Accounts Receivable (AR)

Accounts Receivable is an essential part of every Quote to Cash and Order to Cash operation. It’s the crucial process of bringing monies into the business for products and services delivered– from creating and sending invoices, reconciling payments with outstanding debt, tracking due dates, payment letters and collections as well as associated AR reporting.

Naturally AR performance impacts cashflow and can be a major source of business risk if AR doesn’t receive timely payment for goods and services. Any invoice that isn’t paid will increasingly weigh on a balance sheet and eventually have to be written off.

Too many finance organizations are blowing their budgets to pay armies of people to do low-level work inefficiently.

CFO

7% to 15% ...

of invoices are sent to the wrong recipient – Atradius

1.5 %

On average, companies write off 1.5% of their receivables as bad debt – CFO

85 days ...

is how long it can take for companies in the B2B sector to get paid – Euler Hermes

10% to 20% ..

of late payments are due to incorrect information on the invoice – Atradius

Signs your Accounts Receivable needs Modernising

Many AR teams are still struggling with a long list of exceptions, manual tasks and risks along the AR process. It is also true that while Accounts Receivable might seem like the cause, the actual cause of issues may be further up the Quote to Cash process in sales order processing, contract management, terms, credit checks etc.

Click here to view the key signs that your Accounts Receivable process needs modernising.

Rethinking Accounts Receivable

Whilst the principles & importance of AR is clear, the application of these principles can be a real challenge and varies from business to business.  Finance operations, particularly in the B2B world, burdened with manual and repetitive tasks, exceptions and pain.

Upgrades to ERPs, CRMs and other internal systems are often on the agenda and cited as way way forward. However these big transformation projects often stay on the agenda and never take place or if they due result in huge costs, delays, resource issues and rarely deliver on expectations.

By the time, the upgrades have been completed the market is different and requirements changed.- requiring another project of “Phase 2”. Furthermore some core systems such as ERPs  just aren’t great at handling unstructured data or specific workflows

Big complex transformation projects can disrupt severely and become more about technology & what is possible rather than what is necessary to move forward. Often alternatives to these projects, such as outsourcing or hybrid automation or digital processes aren’t considered but should be as part of focus on what is important.

Benefits of a Modern & Effective Accounts Receivable (AR) Process

It is important to remember that AR issues can also be symptom of wider issues further up the Quote to Cash process. Digitising and automating your Accounts Receivable operations will deliver the benefits below:

  • Fewer surprises & greater receivables & cashflow visibility, management & control
  • Reduce Outstanding debt & Days outstanding
  • Greater cash collection percentage & fewer adjustment or bad debt write-offs
  • Less time spent on rectifying errors & admin – more time on activities to grow business
  • Greater credit control & governance of upstream processes.
  • Identify the real causes of operational issues which are often up stream such as CPQ, contracting, sales order processing.
  • Focus on your best accounts and understand which accounts aren’t profitable or are risky
  • Easy reconciliation of internal systems with payments and banks accounts
  • Reduce the operational costs as well as overheads associated with manual processes
  • Handle seasonal or end of month peaks in activity without extra cost or issues
  • Deliver a better customer experience
  • Focus more our your core business, customers and growth rather than non-core but critical operations.

How We Can Help Transform Accounts Receivable

Whether you are small business looking to standardise operational and document procedures or a larger business looking for efficiencies and improved visibility and control – we can help. ProcessFlows specialise in a range of Business Process Management (BPM) solutions and services to help business take back control, to fill the gaps and transform their QTC and AR processes:

Digitise & Automate Accounts Receivable Tasks & Processes

We provide bespoke & custom digital & automated AR processes to manage and enforce standard AR & Quote to Cash procedures and policies with full tracking and integration with existing systems and processes. Where tasks or processing volume is a manual challenge we automate for further efficiencies.

Click the following link to view Digital and Automated AR Processes.

Accounts Receivable Resource & Tasks as a Service

Where you have gaps in resource and arent able to cover gaps or automate, customers can utilise the skills and expertise of our teams via our managed service centre. This can be on a dedicated or on a per task basis, either permanently or as a peak overflow resource.

Find out more about our world class service delivery operation here.

And More….

ProcessFlows specialise in a wide range of solutions and services for digital workplaces and operations that can address help keep your AR & QTC process operational and in your control.  From custom Business Intelligence & Dashboards, intelligent data capture through to content management or collaboration platforms we can keep team and operations productive.

Find out more about ProcessFlows here

Not Sure Where to Start Your AR Transformation?

We always map and optimise before digitising, Automating or any form of process change. Many businesses neglect this step and fail later. We use a formal discovery process and structured methodology for assessing, planning and delivering transformation – It’s the safest approach and delivers the best results for each business.

Key elements and stages include:

  1. Understand specific business & operational requirements and challenges.
  2. Understand the operational context – Map existing AR processes including interconnected processes, people and systems – upstream and downstream.
  3. Confirm assessment results, highlight gaps and propose any specific recommendations across people, process and systems.
  4. Once a specific solution and or service is agreed, our accredited project management team manages the smooth implementation process through to signoff and transition to continuous improvement.

Book your receivables finance transformation consultation here.

Why ProcessFlows for Quote to Cash & Accounts Receivables?

We have a 35 year track record of success & expertise in data capture, digital processes, managed services and automation in finance, sales order processing and delivery operations

A robust approach to transformation based on partnership and supporting every step of the journey from creating a vision and plan through to project managed development, implementation, transition as well as continuous improvement and support.

Accredited end to end expertise from Business Process Analysts, Solutions Architects and Project Managers through to Implementation Engineers, Software developers and Multi-tiered Service desk operations.

We are independent. We partner with the leading technology providers on the market– such as Kofax, ReadSoft, Abbey, Opentext, Microsoft and Hyland. Based on these and our world-class service desk we have delivered our own hybrid Automation & process platform

For these reasons and more, ProcessFlows should be your trusted partner to support your process and business transformation.
Find out more by clicking here.

Accounts Receivables Customers

Here are a some of our customers, from small enterprise to large organisations that partner with us to transform and digitise their operations.

To read all of our success stories, visit our Case Studies page.

Request a No Obligation Consultation

What’s your Quote to Cash and Accounts Receivable challenge and vision?

Whether you are small business looking to standardise operational and document procedures or a larger business looking for efficiencies and improved visibility and control – we can help.

We offer no obligation consultations to help you optimise, digitise and automate your Quote to cash & AR operations.

Book your consultation today:

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