Cash and receivables
Get paid sooner by seeing the problem sooner
Days sales outstanding, aging, collections and cash receipts, current every morning instead of reconstructed at month end.
What you will be able to see
The numbers you can finally trust
Each one exists in your systems today. None of them is currently something you would bet a decision on.
- Days sales outstanding
- Overall and by division, trended instead of quoted once a quarter.
- Past due balance
- On a definition everyone agrees with, which is rarer than it sounds.
- Aging distribution
- Where the balance really sits, with the buckets labeled honestly.
- Cash receipts
- What landed, against what was expected to land.
What changes
The same measure, before and after
Nothing here is a new metric. It is the one you already care about, made trustworthy.
Why you cannot trust it today
The aging buckets lie
A bucket labeled current routinely contains invoices that are already weeks late. Teams read the label, not the definition, and the past due figure they act on is smaller than the real one.
It is assembled, not observed
Receivables reporting is usually rebuilt by hand each cycle. By the time the picture exists, the window to chase the oldest balances has closed.
Two systems, two answers
The accounting system and the operational one disagree, and whichever is open at the time becomes the truth for that conversation.
What we do about it
Agree the definition first
Past due, current and disputed get one meaning that everybody accepts, with one person who settles it. Every figure downstream inherits that, which is why nobody arrives at a meeting with a different number.
Model it once
The calculation lives in the warehouse instead of in each report, so the number cannot drift between screens.
Put it where collections happen
A receivables screen with the balance, the aging and the account, plus a scheduled sweep that raises what crossed a threshold overnight.
FAQs
Usually the definition and the timing. Most aging reports we see lump not-yet-due in with recently-late, and they turn up on a cycle instead of continuously.
Only with your written sign-off. The default is read-only, and most of the value here comes from simply being able to see it.
Other measures
Most engagements baseline three or four
Baseline working capital in week one
Half an hour works out which measures are worth baselining and whether your systems can be read.