Resources
The thinking, written out.
Recurring revenue operations
The shape of the problem, and the vocabulary for talking about it.
What is recurring receivables management?
The category between billing software, payment providers and accounting systems — what it covers, and why organizations end up doing it in a spreadsheet.
6 min read
Recurring billing vs recurring receivables
Two phrases that sound like synonyms and describe opposite halves of the same problem. Where the line is, and why it matters when choosing software.
5 min read
An invoice generated is not revenue collected
Four numbers that get used interchangeably in board reporting — billed, received, allocated and collectible — and what goes wrong when they are conflated.
5 min read
What is an obligation in billing?
Why the underlying fact that money is owed should be modeled separately from the invoice that communicates it.
5 min read
A glossary of recurring receivables
Expected, received, allocated, matched, reconciled, settled, outstanding — twelve words the industry uses interchangeably, defined so they stop meaning the same thing.
7 min read
Reconciliation
Matching money to obligations, and handling everything that will not match.
What is cash application?
The finance term for matching incoming payments to the obligations they settle — why it is a discipline rather than a data-entry task, and how it fails.
6 min read
Why payment reconciliation breaks at scale
Reconciliation does not degrade smoothly as volume grows. It works, then it collapses — and the reason is that the exception rate is roughly constant.
5 min read
Payment vs settlement: what's the difference?
A payment is money moving. A settlement is an obligation being discharged. Systems that conflate them cannot represent partial or split allocations.
4 min read
How to manage unidentified payments
Money you have received and cannot attribute. Why it should be visible, how suspense should age, and what resolution actually looks like.
5 min read
Collections
Turning what is outstanding into work somebody can actually do.
Understanding Days Past Due
DPD is the most useful single number in collections and the easiest to compute misleadingly. What it measures, and the three ways it lies.
5 min read
Why collection workflows need more than reminders
A dunning sequence works on the accounts that were going to pay anyway. What the accounts that are actually at risk require instead.
6 min read
Membership finance
Dues, standing and the particular difficulty of chasing your own members.
Why payer and beneficiary should be separate records
A parent paying for three children, a company paying for staff, a spouse paying dues. The modelling decision that decides whether any of it reconciles.
5 min read
How membership organizations should manage overdue dues
Collections when the debtor is also a member, will be at the AGM, and can vote. A practical sequence that recovers money without costing renewals.
6 min read
Payments & mobile money
What each rail tells you, and what it does not.
Also here
Product documentation and comparisons.
- ReconciliationThe five questions, and the exception queue.
- CollectionsTurning outstanding balances into work.
- ObligationsWhy the obligation is not the invoice.
- StandingWhat a balance means for a relationship.
- Why ZetuWhere this sits between four existing categories.
- Category comparisonsHonest comparisons, including when to buy the other thing.
14 articles so far. More are being written — if there is something you would find useful, tell us.
Bring us one messy month.
Bring one month of obligations and one month of payments. We will show you what reconciles, what does not, and what that is costing you.