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2. Order-to-Cash

What this flow tells you​

Whether the commercial promise turns into money in the bank, on time, at the agreed margin. Order-to-cash is the circulatory system — every other flow either feeds it or is fed by it.

Data sources​

  • Quote and contract data — terms, pricing, discounts, commitments, SLAs, validity windows
  • Subscription events (SaaS) — start, renew, upgrade, downgrade, cancel, reactivate, dunning state
  • Orders and fulfilment — order lines, promised dates, provisioning/activation status, delivery confirmations
  • Invoicing and collections — invoice issued, paid, overdue, write-off, refund, chargeback
  • Payment events — card success, card failure, ACH return, stablecoin settlement, refund processed

Decision gates​

  • Approve or hold quote — credit check, discount authority, ICP fit. Owner: deal desk OR rules engine.
  • Provision or block fulfilment — gated on payment success or contractual commitment. Owner: billing system.
  • Dunning vs write-off — at N days overdue, route to collections; at M days, write off. Owner: finance ops.
  • Refund authorisation — within policy → auto-issue; out of policy → human approval. Owner: support + finance.

AI capabilities required​

  • Decision — rules-based quote-to-order; risk-scored credit; subscription lifecycle classification.
  • Action — issue invoice, post payment, send dunning sequence, process refund.
  • Memory — full subscription history per account; deferred revenue schedule per contract.
  • Escalation — exception handling: failed payments after N retries, large refund requests, churn-risk signals.

Crypto-rail instruments​

  • AP2 subscriptions — verifiable credential authorising recurring agent-initiated payments; replaces brittle card-on-file with cryptographic mandate.
  • x402 micropayments — agent-to-service settlement per request; turns usage metering into atomic billing.
  • Stablecoin settlement — cross-border invoice in USDC removes FX friction and 3-day settlement lag.
  • Smart-contract escrow — milestone-gated payments for engagements with delivery obligations; funds release on attested completion.
  • On-chain invoice — immutable timestamp, transferable, programmable; collateralisable for working capital.

Gauge​

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), trailing 30 days. SaaS variant: net-revenue retention combined with payment-failure recovery rate. One number per business model.

Kill signal​

Invoice-to-cash > 60 days on average OR > 5% revenue leakage in dunning over a month. Either signals a broken collection loop and a working-capital squeeze ahead.

Skill coverage​

Shipped: offer-design — packaged offer with anchor, guarantee, CTA. proposal-writer — proposal from constraint map + ROI model. gl-recon — GL reconciliation including on-chain transactions.

Green-field: AP2-aware subscription manager (composite chain: intent → quote → mandate → invoice → settlement); smart-contract escrow runner for milestone engagements; dunning agent that adapts retry cadence per customer cohort.

Full matrix: skills-matrix.

Upstream / downstream​

5P slice​

5P inspection: Principles (every cent traceable), Performance (DSO + payment success rate), Platform (CRM + billing + payment gateway + wallet stack), Process (quote → contract → invoice → settle → reconcile), Players (sales + finance + support + AI agent on decision and action).