Invoices that are hindered or contain mistakes can create payment delays and more work for receivables management. Process mining lets you check whether your invoices are created within a specific time frame following order receipt and how often corrections and other follow-up work are required. The insights you gain also let you use technologies like robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning to automate as much of the invoice creation process as you can.

Extended time for invoice creation and payment has a negative impact on cash flow and process costs. To avoid these issues, you can analyze the days sales outstanding (DSO) of your end-to-end process by customer or product group, for example, and find out what may be affecting your cash flow. Issuing correct invoices on time is fundamental to maintaining a low DSO. Another important step is sending out reminders to your customers immediately, if and when they miss a payment date.

Frequent extensions of payment deadlines and commitments lead to poor cash flow. Here, process mining can tell you how often payment dates have been extended and which customers request extensions on a regular basis. Besides enabling you to discuss specific issues with customers, it will give you a better understanding of when and why these situations arise.

An increase in invoice-related disputes can have a significant impact on your company's cash flow, since these are often resolved through deductions. With different types of disputes resulting from myriad causes, detailed analysis can be costly and time-consuming.

Luckily, process mining gives you a way to identify errors in invoices and correct them automatically using the latest machine-learning technologies, which can analyze historical process data and generate insights into your company. This will help you avoid invoice disputes entirely and stay on good terms with your customers. Automatic updates of the master data mean they will also be happier about dealing with fewer invoice discrepancies in the future. You can also expect an improvement in days deductions outstanding (DDO).