Case studiesEngineering & manufacturing
Order-to-cash process automation and real-time bad debt reporting
A UK finance team was spending days each month chasing collections through manual steps and spreadsheets. We mapped the order-to-cash process, removed the redundant steps, automated the rest and put real-time bad debt reporting in front of the people who needed it.
- Client
- Global engineering services group, UK finance team
- Sector
- Engineering & manufacturing
- Service
- Process Automation
Real-time bad debt reporting replaced a month-end spreadsheet
The challenge
The finance team ran order-to-cash across several systems and a set of spreadsheets that only one or two people fully understood. Collections were reviewed once a month, so by the time a problem invoice was spotted it was already overdue. Nobody could say, on any given day, how much bad debt the business was carrying.
What we did
We started with a process review rather than a tool. Walking through order-to-cash step by step with the team showed where work was duplicated, where approvals waited on email, and where data was re-keyed between systems.
- Removed the steps that added no control and no information.
- Automated invoice chasing and escalation with Power Automate, so reminders go out on a schedule the team sets rather than when someone remembers.
- Built a Power BI model over the finance system so collections, ageing and bad debt provision are refreshed daily, not monthly.
- Gave team leads a single page that shows what to chase today.
The result
Collections are managed from live figures instead of a month-old snapshot, and the team has gained back the time that used to go on manual chasing and reconciliation. Bad debt is now visible to finance leadership every day, with the trend over time on the same page.
“Meesh Consulting have allowed us to "see the wood for the trees" with regards to our OtC process. They have removed redundant processes and automated a number of others, allowing our team to gain back much needed time for more important tasks.”
