Case Study 6: Intelligent Accounts Receivable Monitoring & Collections Acceleration (Acumatica)

Cash was coming in too slowly.
Follow-ups were inconsistent.
And collections were always playing catch-up.

A growing service-based company relied on weekly manual exports and aging reports from Acumatica to track overdue invoices. Finance teams spent 6–10 hours every week reviewing AR across multiple clients.

By the time issues were spotted, invoices were already late.
Escalations varied by person.
And collections efforts were reactive instead of intentional.

Leadership knew DSO was creeping up — but didn’t have the visibility or tools to fix it early.

Why This Was Really a Data & Timing Problem

This wasn’t a collections discipline issue.
And it wasn’t about chasing customers harder.

The company already had:

• Invoice dates and amounts
• Customer payment history
• Aging data
• Project and client context

But all of it lived in static reports. Reviewed once a week. After damage was already done.

What was missing was:

• Continuous monitoring
• Customer-specific payment behavior analysis
• Early signals before invoices became overdue

Without that, collections teams were always reacting — not managing risk.

Quantitative Impact of the Manual Process

Manual AR tracking consumed more than 300 hours per year of finance and operations time.

The real cost showed up elsewhere:

• Higher DSO
• Slower cash conversion
• Increased borrowing and working capital pressure
• Growing bad debt exposure

And client conversations often started too late — after frustration had already built.

Solution Overview

We designed and implemented a real-time AR monitoring and collections intelligence platform fully integrated with Acumatica.

Instead of weekly snapshots, the system continuously monitors AR data and customer behavior — automatically.

The platform:

• Syncs invoice, aging, and payment data in real time
• Learns how each customer actually pays
• Predicts delays before invoices go past due
• Triggers structured, consistent follow-ups

Collections moved from reactive chasing to proactive cash management.

How the System Works

The system analyzes historical payment behavior to establish customer-specific baselines — not generic due dates.

For each invoice, it evaluates:

• Typical payment cycle for that customer
• Invoice size and risk profile
• Aging trajectory
• Past dispute or delay patterns

Invoices are monitored continuously. When a payment begins to drift from expected behavior — even before the due date — the system acts.

Key Capabilities

• Predictive payment delay detection
  AI identifies likely late payments based on historical behavior — not just aging.
• Automated escalation workflows
  Follow-ups progress automatically:
  • Gentle reminders
  • Detailed payment inquiries
  • Escalation to project managers or collections staff
    No manual chasing. No inconsistency.
• AI-driven prioritization
  Risk scoring ranks invoices by:
  • Dollar impact
  • Payment risk
  • Customer behavior
    High-risk, high-value items surface first.
• Multi-channel collaboration
  Slack and email alerts, shared commentary logs, and dispute tracking keep finance, project managers, and collections aligned.
• Best-practice AR tools built in
  • Real-time aging dashboards
  • Exception alerts
  • Early payment incentive tracking
  • Fast dispute resolution workflows

The experience was designed to protect relationships while accelerating cash.

Implementation Approach

Weeks 1–3
Acumatica API sync, historical payment analysis, baseline aging dashboards, and real-time monitoring foundation

Weeks 4–5
Risk scoring models, predictive delay detection, prioritized work queues, and automated escalation logic

Week 6
Slack/email notifications, dispute tracking, outreach templates, and performance analytics

Weeks 7–8
User training, workflow testing, parallel run with manual processes, and go-live

Results

The impact was fast and measurable:

• 90%+ reduction in manual AR tracking time
• 320+ hours saved annually
• 20–30% improvement in DSO
• Faster identification and resolution of payment issues
• $32,000+ in annual savings from labor efficiency, lower financing needs, and reduced bad debt risk

Most importantly, collections shifted from reactive follow-ups to predictable, proactive cash management — improving cash flow, strengthening client relationships, and giving leadership confidence in future liquidity.