Q. Need ideas and important tips to analyse and recommendations for below case.

Order to cash (O2C) is the name of accounts receivable department at Safag Corporation, managed by Robert L. It contains four teams:

1. Billing
2. Accounts reconciliation
3. Cash application
4. Credit

Credit Process

Accounts reconciliation team notifies the sales representative about the discrepancies reasons in the customer's account. The sales rep. investigates the issue and decide that the discrepancy's amount either collectable or requests the billing team to issue a credit note after the sales manager and credit manager approvals. Accounts reconciliation apply the credit note to clear the discrepancy. In case the sales rep. decided that the discrepancy amount is collectable, the collectors, at credit team, work on it until the amount is collected and applied by cash application team to customer account.

Authorizations:

• Sales rep is authorized for $250 credit on each customer's invoice twice a year
• Sales rep requests a credit note for more than $250, and copies the sales manager and credit manager for approval, if the credit amount is under their authorized limits.
• Billing team only issues the electronic credit notes after all approvals are available, and after checks the credit limits. The credit note is then sent to accounts reconciliation team.
• The reconciliation team applies the credit to the customer's account to clear the discrepancy.
• If the credit note did not clear the whole discrepancy's amount, the sales rep is notified and copied the sales manager and credit manager.
• Accounts reconciliation team is responsible to run the aging report on monthly base.
• Due to the large amount of transactions concerning the customer accounts, all billing team and accounts reconciliation team have the access on the system to each other accounts to save the time as long as they are working in the same department.
• Accounts reconciliation team has the access on the system also to cash application as they are helping to apply the cash at the month-ends.
• 3 new sales reps were hired during 2018.

At the end of Q3 2018, Robert L. noticed the following:

1. Increased the number of discrepancies for 17% than the same time of last year
2. The number of credit notes issued did not equal the percentage of increasing in the discrepancies
3. Increase in the discrepancies aging
4. Decrease in growth of the customers' number
5. Complains from the customers about the inaccurate and not complete account statements
6. Allen Co., an old customer, was approved for $250,000 total credit limits. They have two different accounts in 2018. Total number of discrepancies on both accounts were 18, three different sales reps had deal with them. Some notes on system written by the sales reps states:

• that they did not receive the correct quantities of concrete in the correct site
• received concrete after the pouring time
• inferior specifications
• some concrete was try to deliver to the Allen Co. headquarter office