Problem · Slow collections
An invoice is late until somebody remembers it.
The work is done. The money is somewhere in the process. Nobody owns getting it back until it becomes a problem.
What it actually looks like
- Aging is reviewed monthly, so a problem is thirty days old before anyone sees it.
- Collections happen when cash gets tight, not on a schedule.
- Nobody knows whether a customer disputed the invoice or simply did not pay.
- The person chasing money is the person who has to keep the relationship.
- Partial payments and credits are reconciled by hand.
- A change order was never invoiced at all.
What it costs
Slow collections are a financing cost you pay without a loan agreement. They also hide bigger problems: unbilled work, disputed scope, and delivery failures that only surface when the customer refuses to pay.
Outstanding receivables
Delay
Working capital trapped
An illustration of the calculation, not a promise of a result.
What changes
- Cash is chased when it gets tight.Receivables have an accountable workflow.
- Aging is a monthly surprise.Exceptions surface the week they happen.
- Disputes look like slow payers.Disputes are separated and routed to a person.
- Change orders slip through.Billable work is reconciled against delivered work.
How the audit finds it
- 01Days sales outstanding, and how it moves by customer and by job type
- 02How much delivered work has not been invoiced
- 03Where an invoice stops being anybody's responsibility
- 04Which delays are disputes rather than slow payment
- 05What a defined collections cadence would recover
Find out what this is actually costing you.
Five questions, about a minute. If we are not the right fit, we will say so in the first reply.
Related: Disconnected systems · Owner dependency