Häufig gestellte Fragen
What exactly does accounts receivable do?
Accounts receivable records, manages and monitors all of a company's receivables from its customers, i.e. open items from goods and services supplied. Core tasks include posting outgoing invoices, allocating incoming payments, monitoring payment terms and dunning in the event of late payment. Added to this are the assessment of doubtful receivables, the recognition of valuation allowances and the preparation of analyses for the monthly and annual financial statements. As a subledger of financial accounting, it thus provides the data basis for liquidity planning and receivables management.
What is the difference between debtors and creditors?
Debtors are a company's customers — i.e. parties owing money, against whom receivables from goods and services exist. Creditors, by contrast, are the suppliers to whom liabilities are owed; here the company itself is the debtor. On the balance sheet, the two sit on opposite sides: receivables appear as current assets on the asset side, liabilities as debt capital on the liabilities side. Accordingly, accounts payable mirrors this by handling incoming invoices, while accounts receivable manages the outgoing side.
What dunning levels are common?
In practice, three to four dunning levels are common, starting with a friendly payment reminder to protect the customer relationship. As further levels follow, the tone usually escalates, until the final stage may be handover to a debt collection agency or court dunning proceedings. More than four levels are often considered ineffective because they tend to delay debt collection. The exact design varies depending on industry, company size and the customisation depth of the specific ERP setup.
Is the ERP's dunning functionality enough, or do I need specialist software?
In the mid-market, the integrated dunning functionality of an ERP system covers most requirements, since it combines invoicing, payment matching and multi-level dunning runs in a single data set. With very high receivables volumes, many disputed receivables or international business, specialised receivables-management tools such as Bilendo, Esker AR or HighRadius are worth considering. Such solutions often offer deeper automation, workflows and analytics around debt collection. What matters is less the vendor name than the fit with volume, process maturity and the existing system landscape.
How long do outgoing invoices have to be retained?
With the Fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act (Viertes Bürokratieentlastungsgesetz), the retention period for accounting documents such as invoices was, as a rule, shortened from ten to eight years from 2025. For certain records, such as balance sheets and annual financial statements, the ten-year period continues to apply. The period begins in each case at the end of the calendar year in which the invoice was issued, and electronic documents must be archived in an audit-proof manner in accordance with the German principles of proper accounting (GoBD). Since detailed rules depend on the individual case, consulting your tax advisor is recommended in case of uncertainty.
Which KPI measures how quickly customers pay?
The key metric is the average collection period, known internationally as Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), which indicates how many days on average pass between invoicing and receipt of payment. In simplified form, it is calculated by dividing the average receivables balance by revenue and multiplying by the number of days in the period under review. A low DSO indicates prompt payment receipts and healthy cash flow, although what counts as a good value depends heavily on industry and payment terms. Properly maintained accounts receivable records are the prerequisite for such KPIs to be reliably evaluated at all.