Working with Order-to-Cash

Order-to-Cash reads the invoices you send your customers and compares them with what each customer agreed to pay. It works from the documents in your Data Room, reports whatever does not agree, and shows the money not collected in dollars. This page is how to work with it from day to day.

What to put in the Data Room

Two documents are sufficient to begin. Put the agreement the customer accepted in Contracts and Agreements: an order form, a rate card or a price list. Put the invoices you sent that customer in Invoices. One agreement and one invoice to the same customer produce a first finding.

Add the remaining documents as you have them, because each one lets another check finish. An amendment, or a price notice you sent, changes a price after signing, so it belongs beside the agreement it changes. An order or a delivery note lets the quantity check compare your invoice with what the customer ordered or what you delivered. A credit note is the note that reduces what a customer owes. Adding it lets that check ask what the credit was for: a return, a dispute or a term in the agreement. Earlier invoices and deposit invoices let the credits on a final invoice be matched to them.

Add documents with Add to Data Room, as PDFs, or let a Connection bring them in. An invoice a Connection brings in is checked the same way as one you added. Open the module's Data Room tab to see which documents it has read and to link one it has not used yet. The Data Room explains where documents live and what each kind is for, and Connections lists what you can connect today.

When it asks you a question

Order-to-Cash asks you nothing when you add it. It asks a question only when a check needs the answer, and until then it uses a sensible default and names it in the finding, so you can correct it when it matters. Five questions can arise: how many days a customer has to pay (its payment terms) when the agreement does not say, whether there is an amount of under-billing (an invoice below the agreed price) too small to bother you, the reasons you give a customer a credit note for, any discount that is not in the customer's agreement, and any name a customer uses for an item that differs from the agreement. Until you answer, payment terms are 30 days, no under-billing is too small to report, and a credit note may be for a return, breakage, a dispute or an agreed rebate.

A question arrives as a needs-information finding in the Findings list, and as a card in Ask Ressura. Your answer becomes an entry in your Organisational context, with your name and the date on it, and the check runs again automatically. Payment terms, the small-amount limit and the credit note reasons apply to every customer in this module. A discount or a name you confirm for one customer applies to that customer only.

How to read a finding

The module's Overview shows Money not collected, the sum of the exceptions with a dollar value in the period. That is under-billing, fees the agreement lets you charge that were never invoiced, and credit notes with no reason behind them. The customer list sits beneath it, with an Overdue column for the money past its payment terms. Its Findings tab lists every finding: the customer, the Control that produced it, its kind, the amount where there is one, the confidence, its disposition and the date. Choose Review finding to open one.

An exception says what you invoiced, what the agreement sets, and the difference, line by line. Its provenance shows your invoice line, the agreement clause and the amendment or price notice that moved the price, each with the date it took effect, so you can check the arithmetic yourself. An overdue invoice shows the days past its payment terms and the amount still owed. When a finding leans on a default rather than a value you gave, it says so.

A needs-information finding names the document or the answer that would let a check finish, such as the delivery note missing from a quantity check or the reason behind a credit note. It never blocks the other checks. A fraud-risk finding comes from Fraud Watch and links the findings behind it. The Checks tab shows each of the fourteen Controls with its pass, exception and needs-information counts for the period.

How to disposition a finding

You answer a finding in one of three ways, and each answer is recorded with your name and the date. Accept an exception when you did invoice below the agreed price, and add a note if you like. Reject it with the reason when the invoice was right, such as a discount you agreed with the customer by email. The reason becomes a context entry, scoped to this finding, this customer, this module or the whole company, so the same point is never raised twice. Answer a needs-information finding by adding the document it asks for, such as a missing delivery note, or by typing the answer, such as the reason behind a credit note. The check then runs again.

A customer's own page, under Customers, gathers its findings, its documents and its context entries in one place, with a button to draft an email to the customer about what you found. Findings and Dispositions has the rules every module shares, including the two-person rule for rejecting a fraud-risk finding.

What it costs

Running its checks, opening a finding and dispositioning one cost nothing, and checking the same documents again is free.

This page is the how-to. The Order-to-Cash page says why it exists and what it checks.