The days nobody counts
The indicator usually reviewed is days sales outstanding. But the cycle starts much earlier: time to release the order due to a credit hold, time to invoice after delivery, time to resolve an invoice discrepancy. Each of those stretches is trapped cash, and none of them shows up in the collections report.
Disputes: the most profitable root cause
In most operations, between 10% and 20% of invoices show some discrepancy: a price different from what was quoted, an incomplete delivery quantity, incorrect tax data. Classifying disputes by root cause and attacking the top three usually frees up more working capital than tightening collections.
- Price discrepancies between quote, order, and invoice
- Customer master-data errors
- Partial deliveries left undocumented
- Commercial terms agreed outside the system
Credit as a business decision
Automatic credit holds block profitable sales and let real risk through when parameters aren't reviewed. A living credit policy — with scoring, segment-based limits, and quarterly review — turns an administrative control into a commercial lever.
Key takeaways
- The cash cycle starts at the quote, not at the overdue invoice.
- Attacking the top three causes of disputes frees up more cash than pressuring collections.
- Credit policy is a commercial decision, not an administrative control.
NS frameworks and reference sources
- Proprietary NS framework · FL·NS — methodological notes from the Operating Model practice
- NS project base: anonymized cases by sector and geography
- Open market evidence and academic literature, recalibrated with client data
- APQC — Open Standards Benchmarking (accounting close, order-to-cash)
- Deloitte — Global Shared Services & Outsourcing Survey
- Hackett Group — World-Class Finance benchmarks
This article develops proprietary NS Business Strategy frameworks, drawing on our project base and on public industry literature and studies cited above. Figures are reference ranges; each project is measured against the client's actual data.