Having dealt with B2B customers for many years, and advised other companies on this topic, my view is that you need to "train" your customers to pay on the schedule that is contracted and considered to be fair. Customer executives and management generally respond well to this straightforward approach and respect you for taking care of business (and thus avoiding future embarrassment). On the relatively few occasions when customers have been late in paying, usually a straightforward reminder produces the right result.
Every number here measures how well a company chases its own customers. That's the assumption worth questioning.
AR is the last core function still run in-house. Accounting, payroll, IT, logistics, payments all became services. AR only ever got tools, and a tool still needs someone inside the business to operate it.
It stayed in-house because handing it off was never economic, not because it belongs there. We believe it doesn't. You can't be both the counterparty to a deal and the party demanding payment on it. No amount of AI, automation or process resolves that better tooling just makes the supplier's own voice louder and faster.
So the real shift isn't AI making internal AR work. It's AI collapsing the cost of the work to the point where outsourcing AR finally makes financial sense, the same thing that happened to every other function that left the building.
At its heart, good collections is about removing every possible piece of friction between securing the sale and getting paid. Easy to say, but in practice that needs energy, innovation, and discipline.
Often finance teams would prefer to focus on less mundane things than cash collection. I, on the other hand, can’t think of anything more exciting than knowing my business will get paid quickly, on-time, every time…
Having dealt with B2B customers for many years, and advised other companies on this topic, my view is that you need to "train" your customers to pay on the schedule that is contracted and considered to be fair. Customer executives and management generally respond well to this straightforward approach and respect you for taking care of business (and thus avoiding future embarrassment). On the relatively few occasions when customers have been late in paying, usually a straightforward reminder produces the right result.
Every number here measures how well a company chases its own customers. That's the assumption worth questioning.
AR is the last core function still run in-house. Accounting, payroll, IT, logistics, payments all became services. AR only ever got tools, and a tool still needs someone inside the business to operate it.
It stayed in-house because handing it off was never economic, not because it belongs there. We believe it doesn't. You can't be both the counterparty to a deal and the party demanding payment on it. No amount of AI, automation or process resolves that better tooling just makes the supplier's own voice louder and faster.
So the real shift isn't AI making internal AR work. It's AI collapsing the cost of the work to the point where outsourcing AR finally makes financial sense, the same thing that happened to every other function that left the building.
That's why we built ChaseFlow (.com).
why would you start working before the invoice is paid? or is it more of a renewal type problem
At its heart, good collections is about removing every possible piece of friction between securing the sale and getting paid. Easy to say, but in practice that needs energy, innovation, and discipline.
Often finance teams would prefer to focus on less mundane things than cash collection. I, on the other hand, can’t think of anything more exciting than knowing my business will get paid quickly, on-time, every time…