Customer-to-cash (C2C) process

Customer-to-cash (C2C) is the end-to-end business process that runs from taking on a customer and setting credit terms through ordering, invoicing, collecting payment and recording the cash. It is a wider view of order-to-cash: besides fulfilling and billing orders, it covers customer onboarding and credit checks at the start, and disputes, deductions and collections at the end.

Finance teams manage C2C as one process with shared measures, such as days sales outstanding, invoice accuracy and the share of payments matched automatically, because a delay or error in any step shows up as cash arriving late.

Most of the work runs through an ERP or billing system, with customer data from the CRM at the start and bank data at the end. Common candidates for automation are credit checks, invoice delivery, matching incoming payments to open invoices (cash application) and reminders for overdue accounts.