"Before Upflow, our cash collection process was completely manual”, notes Emilie Hart, Finance Operations Team Lead at WorkMotion.

“We focused on sending bulk reminders, but this involved extracting data from our ERP, storing it in Excel, and analyzing it – a process that could take a whole day to send just one reminder."

This manual, time-consuming process was cumbersome. It not only hindered WorkMotion's ability to effectively target all overdue invoices, but also made scaling their cash collection strategy impossible.

In addition to manual processes, WorkMotion struggled with a lack of consolidated tracking. "We were constantly evolving our dunning process, adapting it to the diverse needs identified throughout the course of our operations", Emilie explains. "But this was leading to the creation of additional files and more complex spreadsheet trackers which made it increasingly difficult to locate the information we needed and ultimately take timely action."

The combination of manual processes and lack of consolidated data resulted in delayed payments and inefficiencies. As an EOR with 10-day payment terms, timely cash flow is essential for meeting WorkMotion’s payroll obligations. Delays in payment collection could have a cascading effect on WorkMotion's operations.

It was clear that WorkMotion not only required a centralized system that could serve as the single source of truth for their essential AR information and cash collection history, but also needed to introduce a robust structure to their collections processes.

Upflow's workflow functionality has also been instrumental in tailoring the cash collection process to different customer segments. "Our main goal is create a positive customer experience when it comes to collections by ensuring we're sending and triggering reminders when it matters most," says Emilie. ”We are adopting a broader approach by considering overall customer balances rather than focusing solely on overdue invoices. The outstanding balance feature in Upflow enables us to identify these balances and send reminders accordingly”.

This ability to send the right message, to the right person at the right time has revolutionized the way WorkMotion approaches cash collection. As well as helping the company reduce payment delays and collect cash faster, Upflow has become a true customer experience tool for WorkMotion. “Upflow has brought the immediate visibility that our customers needed on outstanding invoices - something we did not have in place before”, says Emilie.

Emilie and the team have found that varying the communication channels they use and combining automated emails, manual emails and phone calls is effective in reaching customers with overdue invoices. The ability to centralize all of this communication within Upflow has meant everything remains organized and seamless.

Thanks to the systematized and automated cash collection processes in Upflow, WorkMotion has been able to drastically reduce the number of invoices that are significantly overdue. In fact, they’ve seen a 79% decrease in invoices 31+ days overdue. And that’s in under a year! Added to that, WorkMotion’s DSO matched their Best Possible DSO level in June and July 2024. Calculated as follows, Best Possible DSO (BPDSO) is a KPI indicating the shortest realistic time frame within which a company can expect to collect payments after making a credit sale:

Best Possible DSO = (Current Receivables − Past Due Receivables / Total Credit Sales) × Number of Days in the Month

Achieving BPDSO is no mean feat! Seeing a consistent improvement in DSO since they started using Upflow in August 2023, WorkMotion were happy to see their efforts culminate in them getting paid in the fastest possible time frame in both June and July 2024.