How accounts receivable process automation drives business efficiency

Finance leaders constantly face the challenge of maximizing working capital while managing limited resources. The accounts receivable (AR) function sits at the center of this challenge—directly impacting your cash flow, customer relationships, and business growth.

Accounts receivable process automation replaces manual tasks with digital processes that improve accuracy, speed, and visibility across the entire AR lifecycle—from invoice creation and delivery to payment processing, collections, and reconciliation.

The typical accounts receivable lifecycle includes:

• Credit management and approval.
• Invoice generation and delivery.
• Payment acceptance and processing.
• Collections management.
• Cash application and reconciliation.
• Reporting and analytics.

For many organizations, these processes remain largely manual, creating bottlenecks that slow cash flow and consume valuable team resources. As transaction volumes increase and customer expectations change, modernizing AR management becomes a business necessity rather than an option. Billtrust customers, such as Cooper Electric, have found that automation effectively manages the increasing volume of virtual card payments—without the need to expand their workforce.

Forward-thinking finance teams are transforming their AR operations through automation, resulting in faster payments, lower costs, and improved customer satisfaction—allowing your team to focus less on administrative tasks and more on strategic initiatives that drive business value.

Read the blog → The newest developments in AR automation

The critical challenges facing AR teams

Finance leaders face numerous obstacles when managing accounts receivable processes. These challenges directly affect your company's financial health and team productivity. Before exploring automation solutions, consider these common pain points that may be holding your AR function back:

• Manual data entry and processing: AR staff spend hours creating invoices, entering data into systems, and managing paperwork, leaving little room to focus on high-value, strategic activities that require human expertise. One major challenge they face is working with fragmented and incomplete remittance data, which adds significant complexity to their workflows. Additionally, businesses grapple with the manual burden of navigating multiple accounts payable (AP) portals and processing virtual card payments, further compounding inefficiencies.
• Extended Days Sales Outstanding (DSO): Slow invoice delivery, inefficient collection processes, and payment application delays keep cash tied up in receivables longer than necessary, restricting your available working capital. Lowering DSO involves implementing process improvements and making strategic adjustments that tackle the underlying causes.
• Limited visibility into AR performance: Without centralized, real-time tracking, finance leaders struggle to identify bottlenecks, forecast cash flow accurately, or make data-driven decisions about collection strategies.
• Error-prone processes: Manual handling increases the risk of mistakes in invoice creation, delivery, and payment application—leading to payment delays, customer frustration, and time wasted on corrections.
• Inefficient collections management: Without automated prioritization and reminders, collectors often focus on the wrong accounts or use inconsistent approaches, resulting in suboptimal recovery rates.
• Payment application complexity: Matching incoming payments to the correct invoices becomes increasingly difficult as payment methods multiply and remittance information arrives through various channels. AI-powered solutions like Billtrust Cash Application achieve match rates over 90%, dramatically reducing errors.
• Customer experience issues: Outdated AR processes create friction points for your customers, from limited payment options to poor visibility into their account status and outstanding balances. Analyze your processes through the eyes of your customers to uncover opportunities for improvement.

These challenges compound over time, creating a drag on your financial performance and team effectiveness. How much cash could your business unlock by addressing these inefficiencies? Accounts receivable automation offers a path to overcome these obstacles and transform your AR function from a cost center to a strategic asset.

100% of finance teams have seen value from their AR automation software

What AR processes can my business automate?

Identifying which AR processes to automate first can help prioritize your investments for maximum impact. Here are the core processes where automation delivers significant benefits:

Invoice generation and delivery

Invoice creation and distribution represent significant opportunities for efficiency gains:

• Automatic generation of invoices based on completed orders or services.
• Multi-channel delivery options, including email, customer portals, and AP portals.
• Integration with existing ERP systems to eliminate double data entry.
• Automated tracking of invoice status and delivery confirmation.
• Compliance with regional e-invoicing regulations and formats.

Businesses that automate invoice delivery often see dramatic reductions in processing costs, faster delivery timeframes, and earlier payment receipt.

Payment reminders and collections communications

Collections activities benefit substantially from automation:

• Scheduled payment reminders before and after due dates.
• Customized communication strategies based on customer segments.
• Automated escalation pathways for aging invoices.
• Prioritized worklists for collections staff based on risk factors.
• Self-service options for customers to resolve payment issues.

Well-designed accounts receivable collections software incorporates both automated communications and strategic human touchpoints for optimal results.

Cash application and reconciliation

Perhaps no area offers greater ROI for automation than cash application:

• Automatic capture of remittance data from multiple sources.
• AI-powered matching of payments to open invoices.
• Handling of short pays, deductions, and discounts.
• Integration with bank feeds for real-time payment visibility.
• Exception handling workflows for unmatched items.

Automated cash application dramatically reduces the time your team spends manually matching payments to invoices while significantly improving accuracy rates.

Credit management and risk assessment

Credit operations benefit from data-driven automation:

• Streamlined credit application processing.
• Automated credit scoring and decisioning.
• Ongoing credit monitoring and risk flagging.
• Integration with credit bureaus and external data sources.
• Dynamic credit limit management.

Automation helps balance risk management with customer experience, resulting in faster onboarding and fewer default situations.

Reporting and analytics

Data-driven insights empower better decision-making:

• Real-time dashboards showing AR performance metrics.
• Aging reports and DSO analytics.
• Customer payment behavior trends.
• Cash forecasting tools.
• Exception reporting for proactive management.

AR automation virtually eliminates human error in routine tasks, freeing your team to focus on analysis and strategy rather than data processing. The right approach isn't automating everything at once—it's identifying which processes create the most friction in your current operation and targeting those first for maximum impact.

Read the blog → How to automate accounts receivable

The transformative benefits of AR automation

AR automation delivers measurable improvements that extend beyond the finance department to impact your entire organization. Can your business afford to leave these advantages on the table while competitors optimize their financial operations? Here are the compelling benefits driving finance leaders to invest in accounts receivable automation:

• Accelerated cash flow: AR automation is a key driver to accelerate cash flow. It directly impacts cash flow by reducing Days Sales Outstanding (DSO). Automated processes such as faster invoice delivery, automated payment reminders, and streamlined payment processing work together to get cash into the business sooner. Billtrust's AI, specifically Autopilot, acts as an accelerant to cash flow by delivering personalized recommendations and smart automation. Billtrust customers leveraging Invoicing and Payments average 36.1 Days-to-Pay (DTP), with a further 34% reduction in DTP when Collections is added.
• Significant cost reductions: Eliminating paper, postage, and manual processing lowers your cost per transaction, while decreasing labor hours spent on routine tasks creates sustainable operational savings. For instance, Billtrust Invoicing reduces costs by automating delivery across multiple channels. The Payments solution helps cut costs by offering ways to eliminate or lower card acceptance costs, including potentially achieving up to a 30% reduction in card processing costs or shifting these costs to buyers through surcharging.
• Enhanced visibility and control: Real-time dashboards and reporting provide immediate insight into AR performance, enabling proactive management and more accurate cash flow forecasting.
• Redirected staff focus: Your team shifts from data entry and manual reconciliation to exception handling, customer relationship management, and financial analysis that drives business value.
• Improved customer relationships: Self-service portals, multiple payment options, and transparent communication create a better experience for your customers while simplifying their payment process.
• Reduced payment application errors: Automated cash application virtually eliminates mistakes in payment matching and posting, preventing customer frustration and additional work that manual errors create.
• Scalable operations: Your AR function can handle growing transaction volumes without proportional increases in headcount, supporting business expansion without ballooning overhead costs. Billtrust solutions are designed to enable scalable growth. For example, Billtrust Collections enables scaling personalized collections strategies to improve recovery rates.
• Data-driven decision making: Analytics provide insights about customer payment behavior, collection effectiveness, and process efficiency that inform smarter financial strategies.

The cost of inaction continues to grow as competitors adopt these technologies and customer expectations evolve. Organizations that delay AR automation risk falling behind with higher operational costs, longer cash conversion cycles, and customer experiences that feel increasingly outdated. Whether you implement comprehensive AR automation or start with targeted improvements to your payment collection process, the return on investment typically manifests within months rather than years.

How AI and machine learning are revolutionizing accounts receivable

Artificial intelligence and machine learning represent the cutting edge of AR automation, taking capabilities beyond basic process automation to truly intelligent operations.

Billtrust, in particular, has adopted an AI-first approach to revolutionize the AR function, enhancing human capabilities through deeper insights and smarter workflows. Here's how AI and Machine Learning are transforming AR:

• AI-Powered Platform and Architecture: Billtrust's AI capabilities are built on a multi-agent platform architecture using specialized agents that collaborate across financial/AR operations, providing coordinated intelligence and actions. Instead of a single AI agent doing everything, hundreds of specialized agents handle specific tasks, communicating and collaborating for efficiency, especially in complex AR processes. Autopilot is a key platform-level agentic AI assistant that orchestrates in-app notifications from various AR monitoring agents. It provides a unified view of AR performance by pulling data from multiple sources. Autopilot is purpose-built for financial professionals, designed to address the full spectrum of AR challenges and opportunities.
• Predictive analytics for payment behavior: Our AI systems analyze historical payment patterns to forecast which customers are likely to pay on time and which might require additional follow-up. This shifts collection activities from reactive to proactive, allowing your team to prioritize accounts most likely to need attention.
• Intelligent matching for cash application: Advanced algorithms in our Cash Application solution dramatically improve payment matching accuracy, even with incomplete remittance information. These systems learn continuously from corrections, becoming more accurate over time while reducing manual exceptions. Cash Application uses AI-powered matching and unique confidence-based matching that is far more accurate than rule-based competition, achieving accuracy rates over 90%, with some data showing up to a 99% auto-match rate with Billtrust Payments.
• Natural language processing for data access: Finance professionals can simply ask questions about their AR data in everyday language and receive immediate answers. This eliminates complex report creation or query writing, making insights accessible to everyone on your team. Generative AI is also leveraged in features like Agentic Email within Collections to draft personalized responses, after agents scan and organize messages into themes like payment promises or disputes. This can lead to 10x faster email resolution.
• Agentic Automation in Workflows: Collections Procedure Optimization uses AI agents to identify how and when to execute procedures based on buyer payment behavior, recommending the optimal message, timing, and channel. Dynamic AI Credit Lines feature credit agents that dynamically offer recommendations to adjust credit limits. Anomaly detection and alerting capabilities proactively identify issues, with Autopilot orchestrating notifications across the AR ecosystem.
• Cash flow forecasting: AI analyzes payment trends across your customer base to create accurate cash flow predictions, helping finance leaders make better decisions about investments and operations.

We've designed our AI approach with your specific needs in mind, combining decision analytics, predictive capabilities, and generative AI—all while maintaining strict data security standards. The result? AR professionals become strategic partners in maintaining organizational cash flow, especially during challenging economic periods.

Choosing the right AR automation software for your business

Finding the perfect AR automation solution isn't one-size-fits-all. Your business has distinct needs and processes that require thoughtful consideration before making this important investment.

Essential features to look for

Focus your evaluation on capabilities that address your specific challenges:

• Comprehensive coverage across the entire AR lifecycle.
• Flexibility to adapt to your established business processes.
• User-friendly interfaces for both your team and customers.
• Mobile access for on-the-go management.
• Robust security features and compliance certifications.

Start by automating your most time-consuming processes while ensuring a path toward full automation as your needs grow.

Integration capabilities with existing systems

Your new AR solution must work seamlessly with your current technology:

• ERP connections for master data and transaction synchronization.
• Banking system integration for payment processing.
• CRM compatibility for customer information sharing.
• AP portal connectivity for electronic invoice delivery.
• Support for standard data formats your business already uses.

Strong integration minimizes disruption during implementation and maximizes the value of your existing technology investments.

Scalability and flexibility considerations

Select a platform that grows alongside your business:

• Capacity to handle increasing transaction volumes.
• Support for multiple currencies and languages if you operate globally.
• Adaptability to changing regulatory requirements.
• Feature expansion without major system overhauls.
• Workflow customization without complex programming.

The right solution prevents painful system replacements as your business expands or enters new markets.

Vendor support and implementation services

Your automation partner matters just as much as the technology:

• Clear implementation methodology and realistic timeline.
• Comprehensive training and change management support.
• Responsive ongoing customer service.
• Robust product development roadmap.
• Industry expertise relevant to your business.

Look for vendors with proven success in your industry and experience with implementations similar to your requirements. The right partner should become an extension of your team, helping you maximize value from your AR automation investment.

Billtrust has pioneered accounts receivable automation for over 20 years, helping 2,400+ customers worldwide process more than $1 trillion in invoice dollars annually. Our unified AR platform seamlessly integrates every component of the order-to-cash cycle to eliminate manual processes and accelerate cash flow.

What distinguishes Billtrust is our AI-first approach to accounts receivable. Our multi-agent platform architecture and Autopilot, our advanced agentic AI assistant, are set to transform the landscape of B2B accounts receivable (AR) automation, driving unprecedented efficiency, accuracy and insights for businesses worldwide.

Our comprehensive solution suite—including Credit, Invoicing, Payments, Collections, and Cash Application—works together on one platform to tackle the challenges we've discussed. With ERP-agnostic integration capabilities and a global compliance framework, Billtrust helps finance leaders control costs, accelerate cash flow, and improve customer satisfaction.

Transform your accounts receivable from a cost center into a strategic business advantage with Billtrust.