How Aït Transport cut its average payment delay in 3 months.

How Aït Transport cut its average payment delay in 3 months. Without hiring a credit manager. Without straining customer relationships. We load a truck, we drive, we deliver. Three months later, we're still chasing the invoice. I was fronting fuel and driver salaries out of cash. Cleavr cut our collection time hard. Today I sign a new shipment without wondering how many months I'll need to float it. Mehdi Aït-Tahar, Managing director, Aït Transport The company French SMB in B2B transport and logistics. ≈ 50 employees, €5M revenue. Freight and shipping for industrial clients, construction-sector SMBs, and a few large distribution customers. 100% B2B billing after delivery, payment terms at 30 or 45 days. Where they started Accounting was handled by two people, only one of whom partially worked on collections, on top of day-to-day bookkeeping. No credit manager, no dedicated tool: dunning was done by hand, over email and phone, whenever time allowed, which during month-end close or holidays meant rarely. The trigger was a quarter where overdue receivables strained cash flow: they needed to finance a fleet renewal and front driver payroll, while an abnormal share of revenue was sleeping in unpaid invoices. The invoice portfolio about 400 to 500 invoices issued per month (one invoice per shipment: modest ticket size, high volume) ten accounts representing nearly 40% of receivables: concentrated risk, mostly large industrial shippers a long tail of small customers (artisans, construction SMBs) who pay late out of habit, with no real dispute delays often tied to an unsigned delivery note, a missing waybill, or a delivery-quality dispute that wasn't escalated in time The diagnosis was clear: the problem wasn't default risk (low), it was lead time. The money was coming in, just too late, and at the cost of a fragmented manual workflow. The workflow before Cleavr manual aged-balance export from the ERP, once a week at best dunning done from memory, by perceived priority, not by rule small amounts ignored for lack of time, despite a meaningful cumulative volume no centralized log of exchanges: the same invoice could be chased twice or not at all delivery disputes (missing delivery note, damages, delays) surfaced late, usually once the customer was already deeply past due The workflow after Cleavr The logic shifted: from we dun when we have time to a systematic, paced, differentiated process: by client type and by lateness. The human didn't disappear; they were repositioned where they create value (sensitive accounts, negotiation, delivery disputes). Two key adjustments were made in month one: a softer tone for strategic large shippers (escalation through commercial rather than automated firm dunning), and a separate rule for delivery disputes, which exit the automated cycle and route to human review. D − 3: Courteous pre-due reminder (email), with payment link, invoice PDF and matching delivery note D + 1: First late-payment dunning, neutral tone, accounts-payable contact CC'd D + 8: Follow-up + automatic detection of a possible delivery-dispute reply D + 15: Firm dunning, escalation to the account's commercial contact D + 25: Formal-notice letter prepared for human validation (not auto-sent) The measurable result Average payment delay: 68 days → 41 days (−40%) Overdue > 30 days: €182k → €92k Invoices past due: ≈ 100 / month → ≈ 42 / month Time spent dunning: ≈ 6 h / week → < 1 h / week Delivery disputes caught early: case-by-case → systematic, under 5 days The most visible gain isn't only the 27-day reduction in payment delay, a 40% improvement: it's the recovery of nearly 5 hours per week on the accounting side, and the end of forgotten dunning. Cash flow became predictable, which directly enabled the fleet-renewal financing that started the project. Today I sign a new shipment without wondering how many months I'll need to float it. Mehdi Aït-Tahar, Managing director, Aït Transport Five lessons a finance team can re-use Cadence beats tone: Set a rhythm before you automate: regularity outperforms sophistication. Don't ignore the long tail: Chase small amounts the same way you chase big ones; cumulative volume drives the average delay. Segment: Treat strategic shippers separately, through commercial escalation, not through automated firm dunning. Take disputes out of the cycle: Catching a delivery dispute (note, damages, conformity) early gains more days than an aggressive dunning would. Keep humans on sensitive calls: The formal notice is still validated by a human; automation prepares, it doesn't decide.

How Aït Transport cut its average payment delay in 3 months.

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