BillingPlatform, the enterprise revenue lifecycle management platform for today’s innovative business models, has officially published the results from its 2025 State of Accounts Receivable (AR) Automation Survey.
Going by the available details, this particular survey discovered that 80% of respondents actually deem AR automation as important, high priority or critical. Having said so, no more than 3% have fully automated AR, with budget constraints and IT backlog cited as the largest barriers to adoption.
Not just that, an estimated 67% were also found to be evaluating AI’s use in AR, indicating an upgrade over the meager 14% who have already deployed it.
More on the same would reveal how the given survey took into account the opinion of well over 100 finance decision-makers at companies across nine industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, networking and IT, and others, all of them coming together to eventually reveal a strong push towards modernizing AR operations.
Talk about the given report on a slightly deeper level, we begin from how it discovered a growing traction for AR automation. This translates to the fact that, even though 49% are considering solutions and 39% are implementing them, most organizations remain at early stages in their AI journey.
Next up, the survey deemed cash flow and Day Sales Outstanding (DSO) as top concerns. We get to say so because 78% cited poor cash flow or high DSO as the most significant consequence of inefficient AR operations, with most companies reporting average DSOs between 30 and 60 days. On top that, 51% also said improved DSO is the top benefit of using a customer payment portal.
Another detail worth a mention relates to how the most common AI use cases under evaluation include collections prioritization (60%), dunning optimization (59%) and anomaly detection in invoice errors (57%). As for the biggest challenges in reporting and analytics, they were manual processes (67%), lack of predictive insights (48%), and fragmented data (40%).
Moving on, BillingPlatform’s survey also discovered that manual effort is still a major operational obstacle throughout the AR lifecycle. You see, respondents cited manual workflows as the top challenge in invoicing (63%), collections (57%), payments (60%) and reporting (67%), highlighting the continued need for automation to drive efficiency and reduce reliance on resource-intensive processes.
Almost like an extension of it, the whole exercise got to know that payment processing remains under-automated, even among companies using well-known providers. In essence, only 23% of organizations reported mostly or fully automated payment processing.
BillingPlatform’s survey also discovered leading reasons for switching providers were lower transaction costs (68%), and better integration with ERP or billing systems (52%). Support for digital wallets also remains limited, considering just 17% currently offer that option.
Founded in 2012, BillingPlatform’s rise up the ranks stems from helping businesses access innovative software solutions to optimize revenue generation through every stage of the customer lifecycle. The company’s excellence in what it does can be further understood once you consider its proprietary technology is currently being trusted by organizations all across the globe, hailing from industries like software, finance, media, transportation, and communications etc.
Not just that, it can be also be contextualized by the fact that it processes billions of transactions and dollars every year, enabling enterprises to grow revenue, reduce costs, and improve overall customer experience.
“Our research underscores both the urgency and the opportunity for enterprises regarding AR automation – that it is no longer optional, it’s essential,” said Dennis Wall, CEO of BillingPlatform. “While automation technology adoption is slowly increasing, many finance teams are still navigating several pain points such as manual processes that are significantly slowing down the AR lifecycle, further emphasizing the critical need for integrated, intelligent solutions that can improve operational efficiency, optimize cash flow and support long-term financial performance.”
