Account Prioritization 101: Are You Chasing Pennies While Thousands Age Out?

Month-end. The controller asks, “Where are we on cash?” Your collectors look at the aging, sort by due date, and start calling the friendliest accounts about $217 invoices… while a $250k whale slips from 61–90 to 91–120. If that sounds familiar, welcome to the club no one wants to join: teams that don’t prioritize the right dollars.

Here’s the hard truth: roughly half of B2B invoices in North America are paid late. That’s not a rounding error; that’s a business model, just not the one you intended.

And because the Pareto principle is a bully, a small slice of customers (and invoices) usually represents the majority of your collectible dollars. Keep treating every past-due like it’s equal, and your Collections Effectiveness Index (CEI) will keep wearing cement shoes. 

‍

What’s really going on (and why it snowballs)

You’re not short on hustle. You’re short on signal.

• One undifferentiated worklist. Everything lives in a single queue, so high-balance accounts are buried under small-dollar noise.
  
  
• Ownership ambiguity. CRM says one owner, ERP says another; two collectors ping the same debtor. It’s awkward, and it burns minutes you don’t have.
  
  
• Static “oldest-first” reflex. Age matters, but age × amount × likelihood to pay matters more.
  
  
• No event memory. A promise-to-pay (PTP) is set… and your queue doesn’t reshuffle. A dispute opens… and nothing gets reprioritized..
  
  

The ripple effects? Conflicting messages to customers, wasted touches, and cash trapped in a handful of accounts that deserved all the attention and got none. 

‍

A CFO-friendly gut check

Safe assumption: one day of DSO ≈ annual credit sales ÷ 365. If you’re a $100M B2B company, each day of DSO traps around $273k of working capital. Bring DSO down 5 days by chasing the right dollars, that’s $1.3M freed. (No spreadsheets were harmed in this calculation.)

Here’s our 2025 DSO benchmarking, if you want to see where you stand amongst your peers and how much of your working capital is currently trapped in AR inefficiencies (not recommended for the weak-hearted Controllers).

‍

Why “right dollars” is a better north star than “oldest first”

“Oldest first” optimizes for fairness; “right dollars first” optimizes for cash. The right dollars share three traits:

1. Big enough to move the needle (absolute balance or % of AR).
   
   
2. At risk (aging, broken PTPs, dispute flags, credit-limit pressure).
   
   
3. Collectible (history, contactability, recent engagement).
   
   

Modern teams lean on propensity-to-pay signals (PTP history, partials, dispute lifecycle, contact outcomes) to rank work. Academic and industry sources agree: predicting PTPs and delinquency improves prioritization and recoveries. Translation: stop guessing; score it.

To paint a picture, this is how “Oldest-first” prioritization looks in real life :\

Your three-lane solution menu

1) Manual fix - get a better list by Friday

• Define a simple risk score in Excel: Risk = (Age bucket weight × Amount) + points for Broken PTP + points for Dispute + points for Over-limit. Keep the weights obvious (e.g., 90+ bucket heavier than 61–90).
  
  
• Set a floor: exclude invoices < $X from today’s call list (unless they trip a risk flag).
  
  
• Top-20 account ritual: every morning, review balances, PTPs due today, untouched > X days, and next action owner.
  
  
• Work from “right dollars” down: enforce 30–45 minutes of deep work on top balances before anyone touches long-tail.
  
  

Effort required: Low (a focused afternoon + team stand-up) but manual AR processes do not scale in the long run.
Expected impact: Immediate focus shift; CEI lift as you stop wasting touches on low-ROI items. 

‍

2) In your ERP - make the list build itself

• Add fields: Risk Score, PTP due date, Dispute flag.
  
  
• Scheduled recalc: re-score nightly (or hourly if your ERP supports it).
  
  
• Queue rules: filter out below-threshold balances; auto-assign by customer owner/territory to kill duplicate outreach.
  
  
• Event-driven reprioritization: on PTP set/breached, dispute opened/resolved, or partial payment posted, update priority list and next task due.
  
  

Most ERPs already expose receivables reports and can drive simple worklists with custom fields + jobs. Get started with what’s there; don’t wait for a moonshot.

Effort required: Moderate (admin time + light configuration)
Expected impact: Consistency (no more “we forgot to follow up”), faster resolution on high-risk balances.

‍

3) With a dedicated AR platform - let risk scoring and PTPs run the show

• AI-guided prioritization: blend balance, aging, behavior, and contact outcomes to produce a ‘today worklist’ for each collector.
  
  
• Promise-to-pay workflow: capture every PTP, auto-replan when it’s kept or breached, and surface PTP-due-today prompts.
  
  
• Predictive alerts: get early warnings on invoices likely to be late; change cadence before they age out.
  
  
• Manager guardrails: dashboards that flag time spent on low-value items, and enforce “right dollars first.”
  
  

Modern AR tools use AI to predict payment behavior and help teams prioritize accordingly. This isn’t buzzword salad; it’s AR operations that can run itself.

Effort required: ‘Moderate’ during procurement + set-up. Then ‘low’ forever!
Expected impact: Material DSO gains via better targeting and fewer missed PTPs.

‍

What this fixes downstream

• Customer experience: no more double-calling AP because two owners touched the same debtor (ask me how I know).
  
  
• Sales alignment: when top accounts are flagged early, AMs can step in before the credit hold email torpedoes the quarter.
  
  
• Forecasting: a cleaner list (right dollars, right actions) makes cash forecasting less tarot, more telemetry.
  
  

And we recommend using your CEI as the scoreboard, alongside DSO. Track it monthly: “Of what was collectible, what did we actually collect?”.

‍

Next steps for this week

1. Run the Top-20: pull your largest delinquent account balances and write the next action + owner + date next to each. If any say “—”, that’s your 9 a.m. stand-up.
   
   
2. Build V1 scoring: implement the simple score above; slice your worklist by score and amount.
   
   
3. Add two events: start tracking PTP due dates and disputes in your system. If your queue doesn’t reshuffle on those, fix that one thing first.
   
   

Related reading: How Top Companies Predict Payment Delays and Win Big.

P.S. If this felt like tough love, it’s only because your cash is worth more than your current process. Prioritize the right dollars, and your month-end will finally stop feeling like a season finale.

‍