Quote to cash: a simple guide for service teams
By MERP team,
Quote to cash is every step between a client asking "how much?" and the payment clearing in your account. For a service business it usually looks like this:
- Send a quote.
- Get it accepted.
- Deliver the work and track time or costs.
- Invoice.
- Collect the payment and record it.
Where the time goes
The slow parts are rarely the work itself. They are the handoffs: re-typing an accepted quote into an invoice, chasing timesheets at month end, matching payments to invoices by hand.
Three ways to shorten it
- Let clients accept online. An accepted quote should turn into a project or an invoice with one click.
- Bill from tracked time. If hours are logged against the project, the invoice can be built from them.
- Take payment on the invoice. A pay button and automatic reminders shorten the wait more than any follow up email.
In MERP each of these steps uses the same client and project record, so nothing is typed twice.