DSO quietly drains liquidity, but the causes stretch well beyond the finance team. Sales extends terms to win deals, operations ship without visibility into overdue balances, and customer success absorbs disputes that go unresolved. The result is a fragmented order-to-cash cycle where cash gets trapped in plain sight.
For mid-market companies, this isn’t abstract: aged receivables climb, margins tighten, and financing becomes harder to secure in a high-interest environment. Treating cash conversion as solely a finance issue ignores the reality. AR, DSO, and working capital require cross-functional ownership to protect liquidity and margins.
The Triangle Problem
- Sales: Extends net-60 or net-90 terms without guardrails, often without finance approval.
- Finance: Reports rising DSO but lacks invoice-level tools to pinpoint the accounts driving the problem.
- Customer Success: Handles customer complaints and disputes, but without authority to trigger collections or policy enforcement.
Each function optimizes for its own scorecard—sales for bookings, finance for reported DSO, service for satisfaction—leaving no one accountable for the full cash conver sion outcome. Overdue accounts swell as terms drift, disputes sit unresolved, and receivables drift unchecked.
Why Disconnection Hurts
When functions operate in silos, receivables turn into hidden liabilities.
- Fragmented KPIs: Sales → bookings; Finance → DSO; CS → satisfaction. These pull in opposite directions, breaking the cycle.
- Consequences:
- Invoices slip through cracks.
- Terms drift without guardrails.
- Collections stall as ownership is unclear.
The real costs:
- Balance sheet drag: Receivables stuck past 60–90 days tie up liquidity.
- Borrowing reliance: Companies fill the gap with short-term debt at higher cost.
- Operational waste: Finance teams spend hours reconciling spreadsheets; service reworks disputes; sales backtracks on overdue accounts.
- Customer strain: Conversations center on disputes instead of growth, eroding trust.
Companies that cut DSO fastest treat cash conversion as a system-wide KPI. Receivables performance is tracked as rigorously as revenue and margin, aligning all teams to the same outcome: cash collected on time.
The Fix
The solution isn’t a new system—it’s connection.
- Shared KPIs: Each function owns part of receivables performance. Bookings are adjusted for overdue exposure, ensuring sales is measured on cash quality, not just volume.
- Clear escalation paths: Overdue invoices trigger defined joint reviews between finance and customer success, preventing disputes from sitting unresolved.
- Real-time dashboards: Invoice-level visibility shows who sold, to whom, when, and what’s overdue—accessible to finance, sales, and service alike.
This combination of accountability and transparency restores discipline to the cash cycle.
Proof Point and Best Practice
CashConvert+ delivers the connection and accountability most companies lack—inside the systems they already use. In just 45 days, organizations establish shared KPIs, structured escalation paths, and dashboards that give finance, sales, and customer success the same real-time view of receivables. The outcomes are measurable: DSO reduced by 10–15%, aged AR cut by 35%, AR process costs lowered by 15%, and $12M in working capital unlocked for a global manufacturer.
But lasting improvement also requires aligning incentives. When part of sales compensation is tied to collections—not just bookings—behavior shifts. Terms are negotiated with greater discipline, overdue accounts are escalated early, and receivables stop drifting into aging reports. Linking pay to cash collected turns sales into an active partner in cash flow, ensuring the full triangle of sales, finance, and customer success drives toward the same outcome: reliable cash conversion that supports growth.
Turn Receivables Into Working Capital in 45 Days
DSO falls fastest when the partnership triangle is strong. CashConvert+ builds that alignment in just 45 days—unlocking trapped liquidity, protecting margins, and improving cash flow without disruptive system overhauls
