Receivables Management: From Outstanding Reports to Intelligent Collections
Illustrative business scenario · Sample company and dataSee how PersivX transforms receivables data into collection priorities, automated follow-ups, credit decisions and cash-flow visibility.
Your ERP tells you what is owed. PersivX tells your team what to do about it, and does most of the follow-up for them.
The Challenge
Northwind Agro, a distributor with 214 customers in debt across five zones and four regional sales managers, managed receivables the way most companies do:
- Reports, not decisions. An aging report was exported from the ERP every Monday and emailed around as spreadsheets. It said what was owed, not what to do.
- Effort in the wrong place. The largest balances got calls; the riskiest customers often didn't.
- Credit decisions too late. Holds were placed after a customer was already far past due and over its limit.
- Follow-up by memory. Customer reminders were calls and ad-hoc emails, with no record of who was told what.
- No view of what is coming. Finance could say what was overdue, not what cash to expect next month.
The Solution
| Before | After PersivX |
|---|---|
| A weekly export, filtered by hand | One centralised dashboard, refreshed automatically from ERP data, for every role |
| Chasing the biggest balances | A daily call list ranked by collection risk |
| Holds decided too late | Credit-hold candidates flagged automatically, held through an approval |
| Reminder calls and spreadsheets | Customer reminders and sales-team lists that send themselves, only when something is late |
| "How much will we collect?" | A four-week collections forecast, and early warning on customers who are slowing down |
| "Where do we stand?" | An 8 a.m. brief for leadership, with a plain-language summary of what changed |
Five Capabilities
PersivX's difference isn't more charts. It connects business intelligence, decision-making, workflow execution and communication in one environment, so all five of these work on the same data, in the same place.
Intelligent collection prioritisation
- Who deserves attention first, beyond the biggest balance
- A weighted score on exposure, ageing, credit use and payment behaviour
Proactive credit control
- Risky accounts identified every day
- Credit holds placed through an approval
- Slow payers flagged before they are 120+
Analytics-to-action workflows
- Statements, recovery notices, CRM tasks and ERP updates
- Run directly from the report's rows
Automated business communication
- Customer-specific reminders and internal escalations
- Email and Telegram built in; WhatsApp, Teams, Slack and SMS through connected providers
- A record of every delivery
Enterprise-scale intelligence
- One report for every management level
- Each person sees only their customers
- A daily summary and questions in plain language
What Is AI, and What Isn't
Not every intelligent-looking number is AI. Be precise about which is which: prospects will ask.
| Capability | What it is |
|---|---|
| Collection priority | Business intelligence: a weighted score built from your own rules. Transparent, and changed whenever your policy changes. |
| Credit-hold candidates | Business rules: over the credit limit and over 90 days. |
| Collections forecast | Predictive analytics: a time-series forecast model on weekly collections. |
| Paying slower than usual | Machine learning: an anomaly-detection model that compares each customer with its own history. |
| Daily executive summary | Generative AI: a written summary of what changed, from the report's own data. |
| Questions in plain language | Conversational AI: answers from the same data. |
The Collection Priority Score
Not every overdue customer deserves the same attention. The priority score ranks customers by outstanding exposure, ageing, credit utilisation and payment behaviour, weighted the way your credit policy weighs them. Sorted, it is today's call list: the top of it is where an hour of collections effort is worth most.
What Happens Because of the Insights
The difference between a receivables report and receivables management is what follows the number.
| The insight | What happens next |
|---|---|
| A customer tops the collection-risk list | The account manager sends a statement from the row, reworded if needed, and the call is logged |
| A customer is over its limit and 90+ days late | The sales head is alerted; one click asks finance to approve a hold; once approved the hold is placed in the ERP and the sales manager is told |
| An invoice crosses its due date | The customer gets a reminder with a statement, by email, or on WhatsApp through a connected provider, and the sales manager sees it on Monday's list |
| A promise-to-pay date passes unpaid | The account manager is alerted the next morning |
| A customer starts paying slower than usual | It is flagged before it becomes a 120-day problem |
| An inactive customer still owes money after six months | The next recovery notice is raised and reviewed before it goes |
Follow-Up Playbook
Every row runs on its own. Nothing overdue means nothing is sent.
| Situation | Internal follow-up | Customer follow-up |
|---|---|---|
| Invoice due within 7 days | — | A courtesy reminder with the invoice list |
| Due date crossed, payment pending | Each sales manager gets their own customers' overdue list every Monday | A reminder with the statement attached |
| Over 60 days, still buying | Sales manager copied | A weekly message by email, and on WhatsApp through a connected provider |
| Over limit and 90+ days | Sales head alerted; hold placed after approval | — |
| Promise-to-pay missed | Account manager alerted | A follow-up referencing the promised date |
| Inactive over 180 days | Finance gets the recovery list weekly | Formal notices, reviewed before sending |
| Every morning | Leadership gets the board and yesterday's data | — |
Business Impact
Less preparation, less chasing
- No weekly export to filter and send
- Reminders and lists prepare themselves
See it, and act on it sooner
- Collection visibility for every role
- Follow-up that starts at the due date
Risk caught early
- Risky accounts flagged daily
- Holds placed through an approval
Consistent, and on record
- The same follow-up, every time
- Every action and delivery traceable
Because this scenario is illustrative, it carries no figures. These are the measures a receivables team should baseline before go-live and track afterwards. They are what a verified customer case study would report.
| Measure | What moves it |
|---|---|
| Overdue receivables and the 90+ / 120+ share | Earlier, risk-ranked follow-up |
| DSO against terms | Reminders that start at the due date, not weeks after |
| Time to identify a risky customer | Credit-hold candidates and slow-payer flags, every day |
| Manual follow-up effort | Lists, reminders and the morning brief no longer prepared by hand |
| Promises to pay kept | Alerts the morning after a promise is missed |
| Forecast against actual collections | A forecast the treasury team can plan on |
Implementation
PersivX connects to the ERP's database or API, read-only, and refreshes on a schedule. Nothing in the ERP changes until a workflow is approved to change it.
| Week | Outcome |
|---|---|
| 1 | Receivables connected; the headline view running |
| 2 | Drill-down by every hierarchy; a personal view per sales manager |
| 3 | Internal follow-ups and the morning brief; channels connected |
| 4 | Customer reminders, risk ranking, credit-hold approval, forecast and slow-payer detection |
Talking Points
"PersivX doesn't just help you understand your receivables. It helps you run them."
| They say | You show |
|---|---|
| "Our ERP already has an aging report." | The risk-ranked call list, credit-hold candidates and forecast. None of them are an aging report; they are decisions. |
| "We already have a BI tool for dashboards." | What happens after the dashboard: the approval, the reminder, the ERP update and the delivery record, from the same place. |
| "We'll still need someone to send the reminders." | The follow-up playbook: each row runs on its own. |
| "Our customers are on WhatsApp, not email." | Reminders by email, or on WhatsApp, Teams, Slack or SMS through the provider you connect, filled from each customer's own data. |
| "Sales managers shouldn't see each other's customers." | The same report, scoped to each person. |
| "We can't let automated emails go out unchecked." | Reviewed sends: a person rewords the message, the figures stay locked, and every send is recorded. |
What Could PersivX Do With Your Receivables Data?
Connect your ERP data. Discover collection priorities, identify credit risks and automate follow-ups.
Technical Details
For evaluators and implementers: how each part is built with PersivX features.
The dashboard, panel by panel
| Panel | Built with |
|---|---|
| Headline tiles (receivables, 120+, inactive, DSO vs terms) | Card visuals; DSO as a custom attribute |
| Dues by zone, state and channel | Stacked bars by age group; a map visual for states; custom tooltips carrying age split, counts, DSO and owner |
| Dues by age group | A what-if parameter for bucket size |
| Accounts Receivables table | Drill-down with a Drill by list parameter (Channel, Customer, State, Zone, Active?, DSO Status, RSM, ASM) |
| Tabs per use case | A Tab visual: Accounts Receivables, Collection priority, Credit hold, Active · over 60 days, Inactive · over 180 days |
| Collection priority | A priority score as a custom attribute; flow buttons on each row |
| Credit-hold candidates | A table filtered to over-limit and 90+ days |
| Collections forecast | Forecast (Prophet) on weekly collections |
| Paying slower than usual | Outlier Detection (Isolation Forest, Most Likely) |
| Focus area | AI Summarize and Q&A |
How each follow-up is set up
Every follow-up is a scheduler subscription on a table in the report. Alerts (Use as alert) send only when their condition holds, and Run now reports "Nothing sent" as a success.
| Situation | Setup |
|---|---|
| Due within 7 days | Alert on a "due in 7 days" table · Condition # Invoices Greater than 0 · recipients from the Customer email column |
| Overdue, internal | Run individually for each value of a filter = RSM · Sender visual mapping RSM to email · Attach data in excel |
| Overdue, customer | Alert on the overdue table · recipients from the customer column · statement attached |
| Over 60 days | The "Active · over 60 days" tab's table · WhatsApp through a webhook channel |
| Credit hold | Alert on the credit-hold table · Condition # Customers Greater than 0 · hold through an approval flow |
| Promise missed | Alert on rows whose promise date is past and unpaid |
| Inactive 180+ | The "Inactive · over 180 days" tab · flow button with Review email before sending |
| Morning brief | Whole report · Attach Screenshot? · Attach data in excel with Date to append: Yesterday |
When recipients come from a table column, each row's recipients get their own email, about their rows only. Subscriptions run as the person who set them up, under that person's row-level rules. Every delivery is recorded per recipient in the subscription's History.
Channels
Email (To or BCC, attachments) and Telegram are built in. WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, Slack, SMS and ERP or CRM systems connect as webhook channels: GET, or POST with a JSON body whose placeholders are filled from the row's columns. Each provider's API is configured once as a channel.
Actions from the row (Persiv Automate)
Flow buttons run Persiv Automate flows on a row or a selection: send a reviewed statement (values locked to the row), place a credit hold after approval and update the ERP through its API, raise a recovery notice, or log a CRM task. Rows are re-read on the server as the button's run-as user, so governance applies, and each row's Run history shows what ran and who ran it.
Who a subscription runs as, and what happens when it fails
- Runs as its owner. A subscription runs as the person who created it, under that person's row-level rules, whoever receives it. Editing it doesn't change the owner. To hand one over, the new owner recreates it.
- When an owner leaves. The scheduler skips every subscription whose owner has Scheduler Access turned off. Removing the person's access to PersivX does not stop their subscriptions. As part of offboarding, turn off their Scheduler Access or untick Active on their subscriptions.
- Failures are recorded, not retried. A run that fails is marked failed in the subscription monitor, and History shows each recipient that failed and why. There is no automatic retry: fix the cause and use Run now, or wait for the next scheduled run.
Security
One row-level security rule (SHOW ROW · PersivX User Email · Equals Column Value · rsm_email) scopes each sales manager to their customers, with totals and exports to match; finance gets its own rule. Sensitive fields can be masked with column masking. Both are applied in the query.
Features used
- Datasources and scheduled refresh
- Visuals, tables and drill-down
- Custom attributes
- Forecast and outlier models
- Scheduler and smart alerts
- Flow buttons (Persiv Automate)
- Row-level security and column masking
- AI summaries and Q&A