FactoryWhere the number lives / Finance and working capital
Finance and working capital
You chase the big invoices rather than the risky ones, and revenue leaks between the agreement and the invoice where nobody is measuring.
Days sales outstanding. Agreed in writing, before anything is built.
What this looks like from the inside.
If three or more of these are true, there is almost certainly a number here worth chasing.
- 01Collections are sequenced by invoice size, not by probability of payment.
- 02What was agreed and what was invoiced differ, and the difference is written off at year end.
- 03The same item is bought from four suppliers at four prices.
- 04Escalation and rebate entitlements expire unclaimed because assembling evidence takes too long.
- 05Retention money sits with clients because nobody owns chasing it.
The number we would agree first.
Days sales outstanding on the agreed definition, or value variance between agreed price and invoiced price across the period. Excluded: intercompany and disputed items under legal process.
Working capital is felt physically by an owner, and the cost of capital makes the arithmetic compelling without any heroic assumptions.
A receivables risk view on one export of your ageing: which invoices are genuinely at risk, as opposed to merely large.
7 plays that move it.
Each is built from the same nine patterns and reads the same memory. The first is priced as a pilot. Every one after it runs on a memory that already exists.
- FinanceReceivables prioritisation
- FinanceOrder to cash reconciliation
- FinanceCollections sequencing
- FinanceProcurement spend consolidation
- FinanceContract renewal leakage
- FinancePrice escalation and raw material claims
- FinanceRebate and incentive capture
A number in this function we have already moved.
Success story / Auto componentsThe escalation clause was in the contract. Nobody was claiming it.
Raw material increases were absorbed quarter after quarter because assembling the evidence took longer than the claim window allowed, and nobody had ever computed what that cost.
Read the success story