₹18Cr booked, ₹6.2Cr collected. How do we fix the collections process?
Worth answering a different question first. Which of three things is actually happening?
Overdue receivables almost always come from one of three causes. Each needs a completely different fix, so treating them all as "a collections process problem" usually fixes none of them.
One — nobody owns it
An ownership gap exists when no one in the company is measured on cash actually arriving. The Sales Executive is measured on order booking. The accounts team raises the invoice. Nobody is measured on the money coming in.
So the invoice goes out and enters a queue that nobody works. It is not being chased badly. It is not being chased at all, because chasing it is nobody's number.
Two — delivery is blocking payment
A visibility gap exists when the customer is withholding payment until something is resolved, and nobody inside your company knows. A service issue, a partial delivery, one disputed line item. The customer is not refusing to pay — they are waiting for someone to fix something first.
Usually nobody has told you, because each function sees only its own slice. Operations is handling multiple deliveries. Sales is chasing the next deal. Finance only reports the gap. The reason for the delay exists — it just sits in a place no one is looking.
Three — the clock never started
An invoice acceptance gap exists when your invoice was rejected at the customer's end, so their payment terms never began. Your terms say 60 days, and you are counting from the date you raised the invoice. Their system is counting from the date it was accepted.
If the goods receipt note (GRN) was not done, the PO number did not match, or the GST details were wrong, the invoice was rejected at their vendor portal. Nobody told you, because the rejection email goes to whoever submitted it — and it often stops there.
Your team is chasing a customer who has no payable recorded against your name. That invoice does not exist in their books yet
That is not a payment delay. No amount of follow-up calls will move it, because there is nothing in the customer's system to pay.
The 20-minute diagnosis
You can tell which gap you have in twenty minutes, using your ten largest overdue invoices.
The Three-Bucket Test
Pull your ten largest overdue invoices
Largest by value, not oldest. These are where the cash actually sits.
Write one sentence on why each has not been paid
Not "customer delay." The actual reason. If nobody on your team can write that sentence for an invoice, that alone tells you something.
Sort them into the three buckets
Ownership, delivery, or invoice acceptance. The bucket with the most invoices is your real problem.
Each bucket needs a different fix
Mostly ownership
Appoint one person and give them a collections number to carry, the same way Sales carries an order-booking number.
Mostly delivery
Your collections problem is an operations problem. Chasing harder will not help until the open service issues are closed.
Mostly invoice acceptance
Finance should confirm every invoice is accepted on the customer's portal within 48 hours of raising it — not just that it was sent.
"Fix the collections process" is three different problems wearing one name
Run the test before changing anything. A founder who fixes ownership when the real issue is invoice rejection will appoint a collections owner who spends the next quarter chasing payables that do not exist.
Related: 112% of target, no cash to pay salaries — why the ownership gap exists in the first place.