Order to cash (O2C)
The stages, in plain terms
Order to cash is less a single system than a relay race across several of them.
- Capture: the order arrives, by email, PDF, message, or portal.
- Validate and price: match each line, apply the right list, check credit.
- Fulfil: pick, pack, and dispatch.
- Invoice: raise and send the invoice.
- Collect and reconcile: chase if needed, then match the payment.
Where it leaks in distribution
The cost rarely sits inside a stage. It sits in the hand-offs: an order retyped from an email into the ERP, a price checked by hand, an invoice that nobody chased until it was a month overdue. Each hand-off is a chance to lose time, introduce an error, or delay the cash.
What good looks like
A healthy order-to-cash cycle moves the routine cases through automatically and reserves people for the exceptions. Orders are read and written without re-keying, invoices are chased consistently and politely, and a human steps in only where price, credit, or a relationship is at stake.
Frequently asked questions
What does order to cash mean?
Order to cash is the whole sequence from a customer placing an order to you collecting the money for it: order capture, confirmation and pricing, fulfilment and dispatch, invoicing, and payment collection.
What are the stages of order to cash?
Typically: capturing the order, validating and pricing it, checking credit, fulfilling and dispatching, raising the invoice, and collecting payment, then reconciling it. Each stage often lives in a different system.
Why does order to cash matter for wholesalers?
Because a distributor funds real stock on thin margins, delays and errors anywhere in the cycle tie up cash and burn goodwill. The hand-offs between systems are where most of the cost hides.
How can order to cash be automated?
The repetitive links, reading and keying orders, applying prices, sending invoice reminders, can be automated, with a human kept on anything that touches price, credit, or a customer relationship.
See it running on a real wholesale P&L
Thirty minutes with a founder. Bring your three most painful manual processes.