Originally aired November 4, 2025 on Extropy On AIr.
Accounts receivable automation isn’t about chasing payments faster. It is about cash flow resilience, stronger customer relationships and freeing AR teams to focus on value instead of volume. In the third episode of our Esker partner series, Kevin Zirkle of Extropy Advisors and Aaron LeHew of Esker talk through what AR teams are up against, how Esker automates the full receivables cycle, where AI helps, and the results one client saw just 60 days after go-live.
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Key takeaways
- AR teams are stuck in reactive work: manual tracking, hidden disputes, customer portals and guesswork forecasting.
- Esker covers the full AR cycle, from credit and invoicing through collections, disputes, cash application and analytics.
- With more than 50 AI use cases, Esker helps prioritize, predict and spot risk while keeping a human in the loop.
- One client cut total past due by 34% and 31+ day past due by 57% within 60 days of going live.
- Modern AR is a strategic lever for working capital, customer retention and forecasting.
What are AR teams up against today?
Aaron sees AR teams spending much of their time manually tracking outstanding invoices and balances with inconsistent legacy tools, which keeps them reactive. On top of following up on payments, they deal with disputes buried in emails and a growing number of customer AP portals they have to log into to find out when they’ll be paid. Cash forecasting often ends up as guesswork based on limited data.
The result is burnout. When people are stuck in spreadsheets doing work that doesn’t feel meaningful, they look elsewhere. Add market disruption like tariffs, staffing shortages as people move to on-demand work, and customers changing how they want to do business, and the pressure keeps growing. Kevin adds that clients with millions in overdue receivables usually don’t have bad customers. They have poor visibility and reactive processes.
How does Esker automate accounts receivable?
Aaron walks through the full cycle:
- Invoicing. Delivering invoices the way each customer expects, whether by email, EDI or AP portals like Ariba, Coupa and Tungsten, while keeping up with e-invoicing mandates in countries like Germany, France and Belgium.
- Collections. Automated worklists prioritized by risk, behavior and account priority, with customer communication tracked in one place instead of across disconnected systems.
- Disputes. Real-time dispute resolution workflows, because if an invoice isn’t being paid on time, there is usually a reason.
- Cash application. Customers now pay by EFT, wire, ACH and virtual card, not just checks through a lockbox. Esker normalizes those payments, matches them and leaves people to handle only the exceptions.
- Credit management. Faster customer onboarding that follows credit policy, with insight into risk and exposure.
- Analytics. Trends, KPIs and reporting for leadership, so teams can measure and manage performance.
Aaron also points to what customers value most in the platform: flexibility to change things like correspondence and collection strategies themselves as the business grows, an interface simple enough that it doesn’t feel like operating another ERP, and solutions built in-house so everything works together in one application.
How does AI help AR teams?
Aaron says Esker has more than 50 AI use cases across its platform. In AR, examples include:
- Automated prioritization to show which accounts carry the most risk or promise, and which can wait based on payment behavior.
- Outreach recommendations that suggest next steps based on each account’s history.
- Payment predictions that improve forecasting at the invoice level and across monthly trends.
- Pattern recognition to surface recurring disputes, delays and other issues.
- Credit risk alerts for changes in a customer’s risk, orders that may go on hold, or customers nearing their credit limit.
Throughout, collectors can see why a recommendation was made and can override it. Kevin notes that this builds trust: AI is most useful when it assists, not when it dictates.
What results can AR automation deliver?
Aaron shared a note he had just received from a client that went live on Esker collections two months earlier. Within 60 days:
- Total past due fell 34%
- 1 to 30 day past due fell 32%
- 31+ day past due fell 57%
- Past due as a share of total open AR improved by 1.9 points
All of these were record lows for the company, meaning more cash flow and working capital, sooner. Kevin credits the alignment of people, process and technology.
How does Extropy help Esker AR customers?
Aaron sees Esker and Extropy as complementary. Esker builds and delivers the technology, while Extropy helps with best practices, change management and follow-up. That includes customer segmentation strategies, escalation paths and rules for unresolved disputes and delinquent accounts, and the KPIs each level of the organization should track after go-live. Extropy translates business logic into system configuration, which is what helps clients get value and keep expanding. Kevin adds that Extropy helps clients segment customers not just by size, but by behavior, communication preference and dispute frequency.
Why should CFOs care about accounts receivable?
For Aaron, AR is a competitive advantage for the office of the CFO. It drives working capital and liquidity, protects customer relationships when acquisition costs are high, helps contain costs as the company grows, gives people more meaningful work and room to grow, and adds the collections forecasting detail that is often missing from total cash forecasting. Done right, AR moves from a back office burden to a strategic platform.
What is the future of AR automation?
Aaron expects deeper integration across ERPs, data warehouses and CRMs to bring credit and risk insight further upstream. Customers want Amazon-like self-service to see invoices and statements and pay quickly, any time. And AR will increasingly become a revenue enabler, helping sales spot churn risk early, find cross-sell opportunities and see how customers are performing, so finance and sales work as one team.
In their words
If we can measure it, then we can manage it.
Aaron LeHew, Esker
If the invoice isn’t going to be paid on time, there’s probably a good reason.
Aaron LeHew, Esker
About the speakers
Kevin Zirkle is Director of Business Development at Extropy Advisors, where he works across Extropy’s partner ecosystem, matching organizations with the right technology and the right people to move transformation from the whiteboard into production.
Aaron LeHew is Invoice to Cash Sales Manager at Esker, where he works with organizations on accounts receivable automation.
FAQ
What is AR automation?
Accounts receivable automation covers the full cycle from customer credit onboarding and invoicing through collections, dispute resolution, cash application and reporting. Done well, it gives collectors prioritized worklists, keeps customer communication in one place, matches payments automatically and leaves people to handle the exceptions and relationships.
How does AI help accounts receivable teams?
AI can prioritize accounts by risk and payment behavior, recommend next steps for outreach, predict when payments will arrive, surface recurring disputes and delays, and flag credit risk changes early. In Esker’s approach, collectors can always see why a recommendation was made and can override it, keeping a human in the loop.
Why should CFOs care about accounts receivable?
AR is a lever for working capital, liquidity and customer retention, not just a back office task. Better collections forecasting improves overall cash forecasting, automation helps contain costs as the business grows, and better data lets finance help sales spot churn risk and growth opportunities.
Keep exploring
- More from our partner series on Extropy On AIr
- Next in the Esker series: Redefining Source-to-Pay with Esker: Visibility, Control, and Connection
- Previous in the Esker series: Order Chaos to Confidence: Intelligent Order Management with Esker
- Start of the series: The Human Advantage: Introducing Esker + Extropy
- Why Extropy
Want your AR team focused on value instead of volume? Book a discovery call with our team.
