Rate cards became formulas. Overdue receivables fell 87%

Why billing ran late

Billing a logistics client on time and accurately sounds like an accounting problem. At this operator it was an information problem, and it sat in three places.

Contracts and rate cards were not centralised. Each carried conditions and clauses that changed what could be billed: minimums, surcharges, zone exceptions, volumetric rules. Every invoice was worked out by a person reading a document.

Terms were updated on calls and in emails. A revised rate agreed on a Tuesday call did not always reach the billing team. The version billed drifted from the version agreed, and the client noticed first.

Billing waited on vendor invoices. The operator invoiced its clients only once its own vendors had invoiced it. Those invoices were frequently late, and often wrong themselves, so the whole cycle ran at the speed of the slowest vendor.

The result was predictable. Invoices went out late or wrong and were disputed. Cash sat in receivables. And clients who relied on this billing to invoice their own customers felt every delay downstream.

What changed

We addressed it in three parts, in the order the data flows.

Digitise the contracts and rate cards. Terms and their conditions became formulas a system can evaluate, not documents to be interpreted. Every clause that affects a line item now has a rule behind it.

Connect to where changes are agreed. Email, chat and calls included. When a rate is revised in conversation, the update reaches the rate card automatically, with the source attached, so the billed version and the agreed version are the same version.

Connect the operational data. Billing now runs on what was actually delivered, not on a vendor's invoice. Invoices issue automatically from operational events. Agents chase payment. And vendor invoices are checked against the agreed rates when they arrive, instead of being the trigger for billing.

What it produced

Overdue receivables fell by 87%. Invoices go out when the work is done, not when the vendor gets round to it, and disputes dropped because the invoice matches the terms the client signed.

The less visible outcome is the one the finance team talks about: there is now one current source for every commercial term, and nobody has to remember which email changed it.