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Overview of the Order to cash end-to-end business process

Applies to: Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Dynamics 365 Commerce, Dynamics 365 Finance

The order to cash end-to-end business process is broken down into multiple business process areas that are shown as subprocesses in the flow diagram. The following sections describe these business process areas and key capabilities of Dynamics 365 that support these processes.

Develop sales policies

All organizations who sell goods or services or even non-profit organizations who collect donations for goods or services need to develop the organizations' sales policies. These policies can vary from how and where you sell, to the pricing and discounting strategy, and how you manage risk in your sales processes. These policies govern how the teams within your organization manage the overall sales process. Dynamics 365 supports controls for many of these policies and procedures. Dynamics 365 also supports many different types of sales channels and types of customers, including consumers or businesses, traditional inside sales, call centers operations, online sales, in person sales, and more.

Dynamics 365 capabilities for developing sales policies

Use the following key capabilities in Dynamics 365 apps to support the business process for developing sales policies.

Manage sales orders

Before you start selling your products and services to customers, it's critical that you establish your business pricing and contracts. Depending on the types of customers you sell to, the process steps and stakeholders vary. For example, in a business-to-business (B2B) model, sales managers can be responsible for establishing and communicating your prices. In a business-to-consumer (B2C) model, merchandising, sales leadership, or company policy can affect pricing.

After you establish your prices and contracts, you can start recording your sales. You can use Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Commerce, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, or Dynamics 365 Business Central, depending on your business requirements. The Dynamics 365 product family supports many sales models or channels, such as brick-and-mortar, e-commerce, call center, B2B, B2C, and more.

An organization can be geographically dispersed, or it might have more than one line of business. For example, a retail organization has a manufacturing plant to produce items, and it has distribution centers that combine manufactured and purchased items. Another organization offers services and sell products to support them, or they sell products and offer after-sales services. A third type of organization trades products, services, and resources across companies. Dynamics 365 supports all these scenarios.

Dynamics 365 capabilities for managing sales orders

Use the following key capabilities in Dynamics 365 to support the business process for managing sales orders.

Manage accounts receivable

Organizations that sell products or services need to issue invoices or receipts for them. The process to generate an invoice or receipt varies. Dynamics 365 supports various formats and sales models, such as traditional invoices for business-to-business (B2B) sales, receipts printed at the point of sale for brick-and-mortar sales, and online or email confirmations for orders placed through a website. Learn more at Invoice sales orders. For project-based organizations, Dynamics 365 Project Operations supports creating project invoices.

Additionally, organizations that sell products or services must collect payment for them. Even non-profit organizations want to collect payments in the form of contributions from donors. Dynamics 365 supports several techniques to capture payments, such as online payments, in-person payments at the point of sale, and payments that your accounts receivable staff enter in back-office applications.

Many organizations and industries offer rebates to customers to establish long-term customer relationships, encourage customers to use buying habits that your organization supports, and increase overall sales. Dynamics 365 supports rebates in the form of both discounts off the original invoices and rebates and trade allowances on a periodic basis based on sales volume, for example.

Learn more at Manage accounts receivable business process area.

Dynamics 365 capabilities for managing accounts receivable

Use the following key capabilities in Dynamics 365 to support the business process for managing accounts receivable.

Manage credit and collections

Collecting payments is critical to maintain a positive cash flow. In B2B sales models, organizations must set credit limits, monitor balances against them, and collect overdue payments. In B2C models, payment is most often collected at the point of sale; however, there might be issues with payments after the fact, such as insufficient funds and requests for refunds. Dynamics 365 offers features for credit and collections, such as managing credit limits, monitoring customer balances, and collecting payments for accounts that are overdue.

Learn more at Manage credit and collections business process area.

Dynamics 365 capabilities for managing credit and collections

Use the following key capabilities in Dynamics 365 to support the business process for managing credit and collections.

Analyze sales performance

It's important in any organization to analyze your sales performance. You want to directly measure the sales performance. But you also want to analyze the accounts receivable and cash flow, as well as monitor customer risk and the overall order management process. Dynamics 365 includes various features to support any organization in the monitoring of the sales process with built-in reports and tools when you use Dynamics 365 to run the processes.

Dynamics 365 capabilities for analyzing sales performance

Use the following key capabilities in Dynamics 365 to support the business process for analyzing sales performance.

Next steps

If you want to implement Dynamics 365 solutions to assist with your order to cash business processes, use the following resources and steps to learn more.

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Contributors

This article is maintained by Microsoft. It was originally written by the following contributors.

Principal author:

  • Rachel Profitt | Principal Program Manager, FastTrack for Dynamics 365