Distribution & trading
From an ageing report to a collections workflow
A distributor with a long tail of accounts where receivables were reviewed monthly from an accounting export. Follow-up depended on which relationships each salesperson happened to remember, and disputes surfaced far too late to resolve cleanly.
Illustrative scenario — not a named client engagement
Before
- Ageing reviewed monthly, acted on inconsistently
- Promises to pay held in individual memory
- Disputes raised at day 70 or later
- No usable short-term view of expected cash
System shape
- Named owner and next action on every overdue account
- Promise-to-pay records linked to specific invoices
- Disputes routed to the team that can actually resolve them
- Agent-drafted reminder correspondence, reviewed before sending
Approach
Process Audit
Tracing forty overdue accounts backwards to find where the delay actually originated — most began as unresolved operational disputes, not unwillingness to pay.
System Blueprint
Account ownership, commitment records, a dispute route into the operational team, and escalation ladders by ageing band and exposure.
Working Prototype
One customer segment run through the workflow for four weeks against the accounting system's live data.
Operate & Improve
Expected-collection modelling added once several months of commitment behaviour had accumulated.
Signals we would measure
Targets agreed before the build, not claims made after it.
Days sales outstanding by segment
Share of overdue value with a live commitment
Median age at which disputes are first raised
Accuracy of expected-collection forecasts
Sound familiar
Most of these start with one spreadsheet nobody trusts.
If any part of this resembles your operation, a Process Audit will tell you exactly where the leverage is.