How Productboard, faced with exponential growth, scaled its cash collection

Before Upflow, Arianna’s cash collection process involved 6 reminders (both emails and calls). After that, if customers still hadn’t paid, she had to stop chasing them. The process was simply too time-consuming and she had no choice but to focus her collection efforts elsewhere.

The consequences were significant: Productboard accumulated 10% bad debt every year due to unresponsive customers, and the team had zero visibility on any AR metrics or analysis.

With Upflow, Arianna quickly implemented successful reminder workflows and saw write-offs decrease from 10% to 7%. She is no longer faced with giving up on chasing late payments, and the team now has clear visibility on cash flow KPIs for decision-makers.

Before Upflow, Productboard’s leadership was flying blind when it came to cash collection. Because AR was managed manually, they did not have access to the right metrics. With limited bandwidth and data scattered across 5 tools, Arianna did not have the time to build and analyze reports.

With streamlined AR processes, leadership teams can now access reliable metrics to analyze and optimize performance. Upflow gave Arianna and her managers the ability to access real-time and relevant indicators, helping them make better-informed decisions on cash flow strategy.

At first, Arianna was alone on cash collection. Her stack included Gmail, Excel, an accounting tool, Stripe, and the CRM. This process caused human error, double entries, and a significant loss of productivity. Because her process was scattered across different tools, only she knew how to handle the load, which made her reluctant to delegate.

Faced with Productboard’s growth and scalability needs, Arianna had to take a step back and reassess the collection processes. Thanks to Upflow, her team now spends 50% less time on cash collection while managing twice as many customers as before. They now have a single source of truth, systematic follow-ups, easy prioritization, and all customer history within one tool.

Internal KPIs: When you grow, cash collection can easily get out of hand. Defining an internal KPI helps stay on top of it. Arianna’s tip: stay under 20 to-do actions per day in Upflow.

Iteration: Thanks to Upflow, the team has learned a lot about their customers. It fosters opportunities to improve the cash collection process.

Don’t wait too long: Cash collection is hard to hand over when you don’t have a dedicated solution. The sooner you get equipped, the easier it will be.