You've just finished the final sprint of the annual closing without having managed to secure your accounts receivable? The end-of-year cash rush often reveals the same weakness: sales are registered, but unpaid bills pile up and cash flow is fragile. Because successful debt collection no longer relies solely on finance teams, discover how to mobilise your entire company and rely on tailored solutions to speed up your cash inflows and preserve your business relationships.
Cash culture: ending the year-end cash rush
The end-of-year cash rush often acts as a wake-up call for companies: despite the strategies adopted and processes put in place, cash flow does not meet the expected targets. Orders signed, invoices issued, turnover recognised... At the end of the financial year, teams discover that the performance reported has not actually been converted into available cash. This gap between order taking, delivery, invoicing and (above all!) cash collection creates a "tunnel effect" where cash flow tensions multiply.
This is far from a marginal issue for companies, since in France, for example, 86% of them experience late payments, according to the latest Coface survey on payment terms and business failures in France in 2025. This is a worrying and ongoing deterioration in payment behaviour, which weakens working capital requirements and can even compromise the financial health of companies: 25% of business insolvencies are directly linked to unpaid invoices. In an economic environment where payment terms are lengthening and business failures are on the rise, proactive management of accounts receivable is becoming critical: managing cash flow in "emergency mode" is no longer enough!
In response to the liquidity issues they face, business leaders are aware that optimising cash collection must become a daily routine and no longer be the only responsibility of the finance department. The solution lies in a cash culture shared at all levels of the company and daily management of accounts receivable.
Debt collection is often perceived as a purely financial matter. However, to draw an analogy, it is more like a team sport where everyone has to go beyond their role to collect cash quickly.
Rachid Aoulad Hadj - Sales Director for Debt Collection Services -Coface Western Europe and Africa.
From turnover to cash collected: when managing unpaid bills becomes a group effort
Today, cash culture is emerging as a strategic response to corporate cash flow challenges, particularly in terms of accelerating cash collection. This approach involves empowering all employees, from sales teams to logistics and customer service, around a simple but fundamental principle: a sale is only effective when it is paid for. This cross-functional approach allows each department to actively participate in optimising cash flow and limiting customer risk: everyone at their own level of the customer relationship can contribute to accelerating cash collection.
From the prospecting phase onwards, sales teams play a crucial role at the heart of the order-to-cash cycle. Access to CRM (customer relationship management) tools for finance teams allows them to understand the context of commercial relationships before any follow-up, avoiding awkward situations where a sales representative may have granted payment terms without informing the finance department. This smooth flow of information prevents bottlenecks and speeds up the resolution of any commercial disputes.
The key is to align these players around shared objectives and indicators to encourage everyone's involvement and establish a common understanding of the aged balance sheet. In practical terms, some companies set up "cash committees", where stakeholders from each key department of the company analyse sensitive accounts, quickly arbitrate disputes, coordinate collection actions and jointly validate any exceptions (payment terms, credit notes, blockages). When these rituals become routine, decisions are made more quickly and irritants disappear as soon as they arise.
Experience shows that this alignment creates a virtuous circle:
- sales teams are more aware of the impact of their decisions (deadlines, promises to customers, order validation) on cash flow;
- finance teams gain visibility and responsiveness;
- disputes are dealt with earlier, which automatically reduces the rate of late payments.
I associate cash culture with a results-oriented culture. In concrete terms, this means that all teams within the company must scrupulously follow the processes put in place: entering the correct information on the sales account and supplier contact, timing the dispute management and collection processes, etc. These best practices enable you to achieve good results: everyone is involved in cash collection!
Farah Anezot, Credit Manager, JJA Group
How can you secure your payments with Coface solutions? Having grown from a family-owned SME to an international mid-market company, JJA shares its experience in this video.
Digitise cash flow, automate receivables tracking
A robust cash culture necessarily relies on reliable, shared and accessible information. In this context, digital solutions play a decisive role: in the era of automation and cash flow digitisation technologies, customer account management is undergoing a paradigm shift.
Electronic invoicing platforms are also gaining ground, recognised for speeding up document transmission and reducing payment times, particularly when they include online payment features.
Cash management software provides greater visibility into available cash and future needs, enabling informed decision-making. A well-configured ERP system makes invoicing more reliable, eliminates errors that can lead to disputes (incorrect prices, quantities, terms), centralises flows, and automatically segments receivables according to their age to trigger automated reminders.
A shared CRM system provides access to sales history (ongoing negotiations, delivery incidents, change of contact person), enabling the finance team to avoid inconsistent reminders and (above all) damaging the relationship with the debtor customer.
Digitalisation also makes it possible to adjust collection efforts using scoring tools that assess creditworthiness, changes in payment behaviour and weak signals of emerging risk.
Combined with configured reminder workflows, these tools free up time for higher value-added actions. You can devote your human resources to sensitive cases and let the machine handle standard reminders. This is a major gain in efficiency and consistency, which also serves as a lever for improving the quality of customer relations with your debtors.
Outsourcing: speeding up collection, protecting the commercial relationship
Even when well equipped, some companies quickly reach a ceiling: growing volumes, complex cases, international customers or disputes requiring specific expertise. Outsourcing debt collection then becomes a strategic lever. It allows you to quickly increase your capacity for action, professionalise escalation and prevent internal teams from spending disproportionate time on difficult cases.
Coface offers a decisive advantage: its local teams contact the debtor within 24 hours, in their own language, taking into account the customs and legal specificities of the country. With a presence in 190 countries, the company benefits from a unique network of correspondents and experts capable of taking appropriate amicable or legal action. The "success fee" approach also provides security for the company, which only pays a commission on sums actually recovered.
Don't wait until the end of the year to clean up your cash flow and secure your company's growth:
- Need help optimising your debt collection? Contact our teams to assess your needs and discover our credit insurance and debt collection solutions, tailored to your industry and geographical area.
