Why manual contract-to-cash holds finance back

The overlooked bottleneck in finance

Every finance professional knows that contract-to-cash is essential. It is the series of steps that turn a signed enterprise contract into revenue: extracting terms, matching them with usage data, building invoice schedules, issuing invoices, and eventually collecting cash.

Yet for most finance teams, this workflow is still manual. PDFs are opened, clauses are transcribed, usage data is exported into CSVs, and invoice schedules are cobbled together in spreadsheets. While this has “worked” for years, the reality is that manual contract-to-cash is now one of the biggest bottlenecks holding finance back.

The combination of increasing contract complexity, hybrid business models, and usage-based pricing has exposed just how fragile manual processes are. For finance leaders under pressure to close faster, protect compliance, and free up capacity, manual contract-to-cash is no longer sustainable.

How manual contract-to-cash works today

To illustrate the challenge, let’s walk through how most companies handle invoicing an enterprise deal today:

1. Contract review: The finance or accounting team receives a signed contract in PDF form. They review terms like pricing tiers, ramp schedules, payment intervals, and custom clauses.
   
2. Data reconciliation: They then extract those terms and manually enter them into a spreadsheet to build an invoice schedule.
   
3. Usage data export: For companies with usage-based pricing, the team pulls raw usage data into a CSV, then tries to align it with the contract terms.
   
4. Invoice preparation: The combined contract terms and usage data are used to calculate invoice amounts. Invoices are drafted and sent through ERP or accounting systems.
   
5. Collections and reporting: Finally, invoices are booked into receivables and tracked for payment. Discrepancies or errors require back-and-forth with customers and corrections in the system.
   

Every step requires manual effort. And as contract volumes grow, so do the risks.

The pain points of manual processes

From the perspective of a financial accountant or Controller, the pain points of manual contract-to-cash are clear:

• Time-consuming: Building invoice schedules by hand can take hours per contract, adding up to days each month.‍
• Error-prone: Transcription errors, missed clauses, or mismatched usage data can result in incorrect invoices. Even small errors erode customer trust and create audit risk.‍
• Delayed cash collection: When invoicing lags by weeks, receivables and cash flow lag as well. Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) increases, hurting working capital.‍
• Audit stress: Manual processes lack clear audit trails. Finance teams are often scrambling to reconcile contracts and invoices during audits.‍
• Headcount pressure: As enterprise contract volume grows, the only way to keep up manually is to hire more finance staff, which is expensive and hard to scale.
  

These problems are not theoretical. They are lived every month-end close and every audit cycle.

Why this problem has intensified

Manual contract-to-cash was always inefficient, but it is now untenable for three reasons:

1. Hybrid business models: Many software companies run a mix of product-led growth (PLG) with usage-based pricing and sales-led growth (SLG) with enterprise contracts. The finance team has to reconcile both in one close cycle.
   
2. Increasing contract complexity: Contracts today include custom ramps, outcome-based pricing, and multiple usage metrics. Spreadsheets struggle to handle these variations without breaking.‍
3. Growth expectations: CFOs and investors expect finance to close the books faster, with fewer errors, while supporting scaling revenue operations. Manual processes simply cannot keep pace.

The opportunity cost

The real issue is not just the time spent on manual work, but the opportunity cost. Financial accountants and Controllers are highly skilled professionals. Their time should be spent on ensuring accuracy, improving reporting, and partnering with leadership — not on copy-pasting contract terms.

Every hour spent manually preparing invoice schedules is an hour not spent analyzing variances, supporting cash forecasting, or strengthening internal controls.

In other words, manual contract-to-cash does not just slow down invoicing. It holds back the entire finance function from moving up the value chain.

A better way forward: Orb Contract-to-Cash

This is exactly why we built Orb Contract-to-Cash.

Orb Contract-to-Cash streamlines contract-to-cash by allowing finance teams to:

• Upload a signed contract in PDF form
  
• Upload a usage CSV with customer data
  
• Generate invoice schedules in minutes that reflect both contract terms and usage
  

The output is a clear, audit-ready invoice schedule that can be reviewed, approved, and pushed into invoicing workflows. Finance stays in control, but the manual heavy lifting is eliminated.

The benefits

Finance leaders using Orb Contract-to-Cash can:

• Cut invoicing delays by 4 to 6 days and accelerate cash collection
  
• Reduce audit risk with built-in traceability from contract to invoice
  
• Handle 10x more contracts without hiring more staff
  
• Shorten close cycles by removing manual reconciliation steps
  

It’s not about replacing accountants. It’s about empowering them to focus on accuracy, analysis, and compliance, while software takes care of repetitive work

Manual contract-to-cash is no longer just an annoyance. It’s a structural bottleneck that slows down cash, increases risk, and keeps finance professionals from doing their best work.

With Orb Contract-to-Cash, there’s finally a better way that’s faster, more accurate, and finance-led from day one.

See Orb Contract-to-Cash in action. Book a demo today.