AR AUTOMATION | Faster Collections Through Process Automation
AP/AR automation that closed the gaps between invoice creation, delivery, and follow-up to bring cash in faster
BACKGROUND
The client engaged Ajaia to look at its accounts receivable operation, so Ajaia began by shadowing the team end to end, from the moment an invoice was created to the moment cash cleared. What the shadowing surfaced was a process that worked at each step but leaked time between them. Invoices were prepared promptly, then sat finished but unsent while other work took priority. Delivery happened in batches when someone got to it. Follow-up on unpaid balances depended on who had time that week, so some customers were reminded promptly and others not at all. None of the individual delays looked serious from inside the process; added together, they put days between the work being done and the payment clock even starting.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Receivables that sit uncollected lose value every day. An invoice chased in its first week collects easily, and one left for a month becomes a negotiation. The days the client was losing were internal, sitting in the handoffs between creation, delivery, and follow-up. That made them recoverable. If delivery fired the moment an invoice was ready, and follow-up ran on a schedule instead of a memory, the same team could bring cash in materially sooner and stop balances aging into collection problems, without changing anything about the work itself.
OUR APPROACH
Ajaia moved from observation to automation in five steps.
We sat with the team and followed live invoices through every step: creation, approval, delivery, reminder, payment. Watching real work exposed delays the team had stopped noticing, because each one was small enough to feel normal from inside the process.
Every gap between steps was timed, and the finding was consistent. The bulk of the invoice-to-cash cycle was internal lag between creation, delivery, and first follow-up, with customer payment behavior accounting for a smaller share than the team expected. That reframed the problem from a collections problem to a process problem, which is a far easier one to fix.
Ajaia built automation that sends each invoice the moment it is finalized and chases every unpaid balance on a consistent schedule. Each step triggers the next, so no invoice waits for a person to find time.
Automated follow-up touches customers, so the rules governing when it stays quiet mattered as much as the rules governing when it sends. Reminders suppress automatically when a payment is already in flight or an invoice is under dispute, so no customer is chased for money they have paid or for a balance they are actively discussing. Named accounts can be excluded or routed to a person rather than an automated sequence. Message tone escalates gradually across the follow-up ladder rather than opening at the same register throughout. We tested the sequence against live aging data before any message left the building, confirming that every reminder that would have sent was one the team would have wanted sent.
The automation went live on real invoices, and the team confirmed against its own aging reports that the internal lag was gone and that follow-up was reaching every open balance on schedule, with no reminder landing where it should not have.
THE SOLUTION
Automation that moves every invoice from created to delivered to followed up, with no manual handoffs and no misdirected reminders.
RESULTS
The days of lag that once existed between handoffs were removed from the cycle. Invoices now start their payment clock the moment they are ready, every open balance is followed up on schedule, and cash arrives faster as a result. Collectability improved because reminders now reach customers while invoices are current, before balances age into disputes. The team no longer spends its week moving invoices between steps, and the receivables conversation has shifted from chasing paperwork to managing the real exceptions.
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