Days Sales Outstanding Reduction Sprint (10-14 days)
A fixed-scope engagement that rebuilds an agency client's time-to-invoice and collections workflow so cash lands faster, typically cutting days sales outstanding by 8 to 20 days. The offer productizes billing hygiene as a retainer-adjacent service rather than a one-off cleanup. Time: 10-14 days.
By InnovaAI ResearchPublished
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Days Sales Outstanding Reduction Sprint (10-14 days)
A fixed-scope engagement that rebuilds an agency client's time-to-invoice and collections workflow so cash lands faster, typically cutting days sales outstanding by 8 to 20 days. The offer productizes billing hygiene as a retainer-adjacent service rather than a one-off cleanup.
- Client grants read access to at least 12 months of invoice and payment history, plus current AR aging. A named finance or operations owner is available for two 45-minute working sessions. The chosen platform's API or export path is confirmed working before day one. Client agrees on a single DSO baseline definition (invoice date to cleared funds, not invoice date to sent date).
- 1.Pull 12 months of invoice, payment, and aging data into one working sheet
- 2.Calculate current DSO and segment it by client tier and invoice size
- 3.Document the existing time-to-invoice handoff from delivery to billing
- 1.Map every manual step between approved work and sent invoice
- 2.Flag invoices that sat unsent more than 5 business days
- 3.Interview the person who actually sends invoices about workarounds
- 1.Rank late-paying clients by average days beyond terms
- 2.Identify which payment methods correlate with slowest settlement
- 3.Draft the target DSO number and the gap to close
- 1.Configure the chosen platform's reminder cadence at 7, 14, and 30 days past due
- 2.Set up auto-pay or stored payment method prompts on recurring retainers
- 3.Test the reminder sequence against a sandbox invoice
- 1.Rebuild invoice templates with terms, late fees, and payment links above the fold
- 2.Standardize deposit and milestone billing language across active contracts
- 3.Confirm tax and currency fields match the client's bookkeeping setup
- 1.Connect the automation stack between project management and the billing platform
- 2.Trigger invoice drafts automatically when a milestone is marked complete
- 3.Route approval notifications to the delivery lead, not the finance inbox
- 1.Run a parallel billing cycle on the new workflow for one client cohort
- 2.Compare send times and error rates against the old process
- 3.Log every exception the automation could not handle
- 1.Write the collections escalation ladder from friendly nudge to final notice
- 2.Assign an owner and a response window to each escalation step
- 3.Draft client-facing copy for each escalation tier
- 1.Build a live DSO and aging dashboard the client can open without asking
- 2.Add a weekly cash-in forecast covering the next 30 and 60 days
- 3.Set alert thresholds for invoices crossing 45 days
- 1.Train the delivery and finance team on the new handoff in a 60-minute session
- 2.Record a short walkthrough of the reminder and escalation settings
- 3.Hand over the runbook with named owners for each step
- 1.Review the first full cycle's results against the baseline
- 2.Tune reminder timing based on which messages actually got paid
- 3.Close out open exceptions and document the fixes
- 1.Present the DSO movement and the projected cash impact
- 2.Agree the monitoring cadence for the next 90 days
- 3.Scope any follow-on work as a separate engagement
Agencies can price this against recovered cash rather than hours: shaving 10 days off DSO on a $1.2M annual billing base frees roughly $33,000 of working capital, which makes a $6,000 setup fee easy to justify. The margin holds because the diagnostic work is repeatable across clients, and the monitoring retainer converts a one-time cleanup into recurring revenue. Delivery risk stays low since the engagement touches billing configuration, not client-facing creative work.
- Aging and DSO baseline report with segment breakdown. Configured reminder, auto-pay, and escalation sequences in the chosen platform. Rebuilt invoice and contract billing templates. Live DSO dashboard with 30 and 60 day cash forecast. Team runbook naming an owner for every billing and collections step.
The client's next full billing cycle runs end to end through the new workflow with zero manual invoice sends, and the DSO dashboard shows a measured baseline against which the following cycle can be compared.