Order-to-Cash (OTC or O2C) represents the flow of data that relates to goods or services going out to customers and generating an income. As is made clear by the “cash” part of the name, receiving payments is part of the chain.
An important part of the O2C process is how these customer-facing functions are reflected in the accounts. A full order to cash suite shadows every step in the journey with records in the books. The importance of writing the accounts as you go along is that it lets decision-makers know exactly what the business’s financial position is at any one point in time. They need to know what value is being moved out of stock, when payments can be expected and how much money is in the bank right now.
Here is our list of the seven best Order-to-Cash software:
- BlackLine Cash Application: The best order to cash software for cash management. A cash flow suite that operates through orchestration with your existing systems to match payments to invoices.
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud: The best order to cash software for large organizations. This SaaS ERP offers comprehensive activity recording and transaction matching that gives management up-to-the-minute cash-flow data.
- Redwood Finance Automation: The best order to cash software all-rounder. This cloud-based system will coordinate your existing software to flow data from orders, through to invoices, and bank reconciliation.
- Oracle NetSuite: The best order to cash software for medium-sized businesses. This cloud-based ERP offers complete business process support for all activities, including sales and payments.
- Intuit QuickBooks: The best order to cash software for small businesses. This is a business support package that can be accessed through mobile apps and automatically compiles accounts in the background.
- Invoice2Go: The best order to cash software for sole traders. This mobile app-based system focuses on business process support for contractors and consultants and includes customer management features as well as billing and payment tracking services.
- Shopify: The best order to cash software for online businesses. This eCommerce platform includes a website builder, fulfillment services, payment processing, and dispute management.
With instant access to up-to-date figures, your management team can work out the pace of stock turnover and maximize the potential of the business. Just guessing about when to order new stock can overstretch the finances and imperil the viability of the business.
O2C helps you decide when price discounting is viable, when factoring is economically advantageous, and when caution is the best policy.
Order-to-Cash systems
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are designed for order to cash processing. The software sector was created for the reuse of data from one function to another to eradicate errors and improve efficiency.
ERPs are also known for their inclusion of accounting systems. Thus, they can generate journal entries from transaction data, found in the central database. After all, any accountant creates journal entries from looking at the transactions of a business, so converting transactions into journals is just a digitized version of what accountants do.
The translation of transaction data into journal entries can also be achieved by passing data from one application to another through a system called orchestration. Many applications now have pre-written data exchange processes built into them. These are known as integrations.
Enabling applications to exchange data creates greater efficiency because it reduces the time and manpower needed to copy figures from one system to another and it also eradicates transposition errors.
This means there are three methods that IT systems can use to create order to cash dataflows: ERP data pooling, orchestration, and application integration.
The best Order-to-Cash software
Order-to-Cash software offers support for business processes and also helps to create accounts. Automation is the key-value offered by O2C packages and the instant availability of accurate sales and cash flow data can help promote growth in an innovative business.
What do we look for in the best Order-to-Cash software?
When looking for the best order to cash software, we prioritized the following factors:
- Cloud platform – SaaS systems are becoming the main delivery model for business software and as more operations move their business process software to the cloud, that is where O2C systems need to be. A cloud platform can monitor the activities on multiple sites and in any country.
- Interoperability – The ability to exchange or pool data between business process support packages is essential to joining up the recording of order to cash functions. This can be done either by using a single package for all functions, like an ERP, or software that is designed to coordinate with third-party systems.
- Cash accounting – Although full accounting functions don’t need to be included for a system to be regarded as an order to cash package, bank reconciliation and cash management are important.
- Security – To be included in our list, the system must have methods to protect data in motion and at rest and also access controls with individual accounts for any member of staff that will be given entry to the O2C system.
You can read more about each of our recommendations in the following sections.
1. BlackLine Cash Application
The best order to cash software for cash management
BlackLine is a SaaS orchestration package that is similar to Redwood. It includes a Cash Application module that is tailored to reconciling payments to open invoices. The system is also able to generate AR records and GL entries to account for unpaid invoices and the payments made to them.
BlackLine has several standout features. Although it is intended to automate everything, the designers of the system realized that some events can’t and shouldn’t be dealt with by an automated system. Some anomalies need human intervention to sort out. The accounting team and the company’s management should at least be made aware of unusual transactions in case they provide signs of fraud.
The scheduler caters to the need for some work to be performed by humans. The BlackLine system includes team management and task management system. The system administrator needs to set up individual accounts in the BlackLine system for accounting staff and allocate roles to each account. This enables the BlackLine system to direct anomaly notifications.
When deadlines are important, such as during closing, those investigation tasks can have deadlines placed on them. BlackLine calculates a timeline and generates deadlines for each task so that all manual work can be completed in time to meet the closing date.
2. SAP S/4HANA Cloud
The best order to cash software for large organizations
The US Army uses SAP S/4HANA to run its operations. This is an example of the type of very large organization that SAP designed its cloud-based ERP for. Very large international operations have different types of issues to deal with than just more volume of records than smaller businesses. There are also strict requirements for accountability, compliance, and control needed when large amounts of money are in a system that has remote managers who could go rogue.
Tight security and activity tracking, anomaly detection, and thorough reconciliation are important features of the SAP S/4HANA system. Every business process has the opportunity for fraud and sales activity needs to be confirmed through system checks.
SAP S/4HANA can get direct feeds from banking systems to automatically check income and allocate them to invoices. The checks on all stages of the order to cash process heads off that other big problem for large organizations: closing. Ensuring that all sales documentation is constantly in order cuts down the stressful task of close management and account consolidation.
3. Redwood Finance Automation
The best Order-to-Cash software all-rounder
Redwood Finance Automation is a cloud-based system that is an adaptation of the Redwood Business Process Automation platform. Redwood operates an orchestration service. This means that it can create batch jobs that run third-party software packages in sequence, extracting the resulting data from one run and passing it on to the next step.
The Business Process Automation system operates through a process flow diagram. The user assembles this chart, displaying which steps line up in series or parallel. The definition of each step includes the name and location of the executable to be triggered and the laugh parameter, which might be data that is output by the previous step.
The Finance Automation system uses the same operating mechanism and it can access ERPs, accounting packages, and standalone business process services. It is easy to assemble an order to cash data flow by linking together CRM systems, invoicing packages, and bank data feed.
The Redwood system can use this system to insert and update journal entries in an accounting package. The service offers instant reporting from its platform and the data that it populates in other software packages also provide better analysis features within those systems.
With Redwood, bank reconciliation, account reconciliation, and close management can all be automated. While providing better information and automation, Redwood doesn’t require system users to change their working practices or access the new software.
BEST ORDER TO CASH SOFTWARE ALL-ROUNDER
Redwood Finance Automation is a great choice because it can assemble a live record of orders and invoices in process and also keeps a constant eye on cash at the bank. This system can generate journals in accounting packages and perform reconciliation for period closing. All of this is performed by running third-party software to extract and process data.
4. Oracle NetSuite
The best order to cash software for medium-sized businesses
NetSuite is a cloud-based ERP. It is smaller than SAP and doesn’t go into such depth of detail over issues such as units of measure definition – factors that many companies don’t want to spend too much time on. However, like SAP, it ensures that all transactions in the order to cash process are verified and match up with other activities in the business.
The NetSuite system will generate journal entries automatically and perform bank reconciliation. It keeps the activity database constantly up to date and offers analytical tools and reports for performance analysis.
This system is also good for international organizations because all of its processes can be automatically adapted for different jurisdictions. When it comes to consolidation, the NetSuite service remaps the accounts to suit the national accounting rules of the parent company.
5. Intuit QuickBooks
The best order to cash software for small businesses
Intuit QuickBooks is designed to support business processes for small businesses and order to cash is probably the most important activity for owner-operators. The tool is delivered from the cloud and is accessible through a mobile app as well as through a Web browser on a computer. This makes it possible to keep constantly in touch with sales data.
QuickBooks includes a billing system that can automatically generate an invoice for a particular event, such as shipping. It is also possible to enter details of a sale manually and generate an invoice. This means that all of the details of that sale are already in the system and while it creates the invoice QuickBook also generates the relevant accounting records.
QuickBooks can be linked to a bank account for payment allocation to invoices and the data held in the system is constantly available for cash position analysis. The system automates issues such as VAT and tax reporting and generates company accounts automatically.
6. Invoice2Go
The best order to cash software for sole traders
Invoice2Go is a great support system for independent freelancers. It includes time tracking and an appointments diary, so sales meetings are not missed and all time is billed for. The tool has a built-in invoicing system and also offers a payment processing service.
The payment processing system offers small in-person retailers and those who want payment on delivery to process credit cards and accept electronic payments without having to take out a complicated merchant account with a bank.
The Invoice2Go system includes cash reporting for instant checks on bank balances and forecasting. The system also includes a dispute resolution service. So, you can easily manage returns and refunds.
The Invoice2Go system can be accessed through a mobile app, which makes it ideal for artisans and contractors who don’t run an office or need premises. You can try the system on a 30-day free trial.
7. Shopify
The best order to cash software for online businesses
Shopify offers a complete package for new eCommerce businesses. The service offers a website builder and hosting. For an extra fee, customers can get the package with their domain name and with a customized website.
Shopify services include a stock tracker, a built-in shopping cart for orders, invoice generation, and a payment processing system. Online businesses don’t usually offer credit terms – a sale is only completed with payment. However, payments can take time to be credited to a seller’s account, so there are still cash management issues to deal with. There are payment tracking utilities and income forecasting features in the Shopify platform.
Shopify also offers delivery tracking, dispute resolution, returns, and refunds. You can start on the service with a 14-day free trial.
