What is Netsuite Quote To Cash? - Benefits, & Examples
What is Netsuite Quote to Cash? The quote-to-cash process includes everything your business needs from the time you give a potential customer a quote for your product or service until they make a purchase, the product or service is delivered and the payment is collected. While the quote-to-cash may look different across industries and business types, many steps of the quote-to-cash process may be improved or automated to help companies increase revenue while lowering costs.
What does quote to cash (QTC or Q2C) mean?
Netsuite Quote to Cash sometimes abbreviated as QTC or Q2C is a term that refers to the part of the process of selling and paying. Other aspects of your business that precede a bid include branding and marketing. But the concrete start of the QTC process is usually considered as setting up a quote.
At this point, you have potential in your sales funnel, and measuring success in transferring potential to customers and collecting payments is a key performance indicator (KPI), not only for your sales processes, but other aspects, including order fulfillment, invoices, and accounts receivables.
What is Netsuite Quote to Cash Process?
What is the NetSuite quote to cash process? Netsuite Quote to Cash is a process with several moving parts that can benefit from sales and payment automation. It is common for small businesses and startups to use independent software solutions to initially manage different parts of their business.
For example, they might have one vendor for accounting software, another for supply chain, and a third for CRM. The problem with this approach is that you are not able to comprehensively view your operations. ERP software integrates data from different regions into a single digital environment that is particularly useful for the quote-to-cash process as it links all steps from sales to order fulfillment and payment.
Depending on the size of your business, industry, and other factors, the bid-to-money process will vary. Here are some common steps included frequently.
- Configure the product or service
- Pricing
- Quote
- Contract And Order Management
- Invoices
- Payment Processing
8 Steps Workflow for Netsuite Quote to Cash
I. Quotation Preparation
This is a way of formally presenting prices and details for a product, function, or order. This will give your customer a clear idea of pricing. It is common for potential customers to request quotes from several companies and weigh the pros and cons, along with pricing before making any decision. But a quote usually means that they are considering doing business with you and that your marketing efforts have been successful. This always includes pricing but does not necessarily require configuration. It’s time to take over the sales.
II. Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ)
A CPQ is a series of steps that generate sales proposals optimized for high-touch sales (or products that typically require more interaction with customers than average). Online sellers can use CPQ to create custom discounts, product customizations, or sales packages. CPQ can be done manually or with fully automated pricing, creating quotes quickly and accurately. The concept of CPQ originated in manufacturing, specifically bespoke and engineer-to-order. Unless you’re selling a complex product with a lot of different options for a customer to choose from, you probably don’t need a toggle.
III. Proposal
Offers are detailed documents that are presented to potential clients in an effort to get their business. This term is commonly used in service link operations where the output provided needs to be explained in more detail than a simple quote. They often include multiple quotes estimating supplies or labor costs and may also include timeline information. Proposals may be requested by a potential client or client as well as a quote in order to better understand how costs accrue and are usually signed to indicate understanding or agreement on the document.
IV. Contracting
Also known as legal review, the contracting stage is the point at which you and the customer negotiate the terms of the sale until an agreement is reached and the contract is signed. This can be as simple as a customer accepting a quote, or as complex as lots of communication and negotiations for more complex sales.
V. Order fulfillment
When the customer signs a contract or offer, the next stage is the fulfillment of the order. It is important to fill out this order as accurately as possible and according to the agreed schedule for the best customer experience. For some companies offering more complex products, software as a service (SaaS) for companies can fully automate order processing, while others may require additional processes for shipping orders or creating a custom product or service.
VI. Invoicing
Some invoices can be fully automated and contain self-service instructions for customer payments using finance management software. Depending on your needs, you can include purchase order (PO) numbers, details of taxes and fees, and anything else the customer requests to send the payment. No matter how it is sent, it is essential to keep accurate payment records until each order is paid for.
This is also an area where efficiency improvements can help boost your cash flow. By sending invoices on time and making the accounts receivable process as simple as possible, you can help get cash in the door faster and improve your cash flow. Revenue recognition tools in financial management software can help you ensure accurate revenue recognition and reconcile different performance commitments so that you can spend less time managing revenue, better comply with industry guidelines, and easily visualize expected future revenue intake.
VII. Payment Processing
It is important to make the payment process as easy as possible for the customer, even if it means additional expenses for the seller. Depending on your business, you should be prepared to accept payments by credit card, ACH, bank transfer, or check. Again, this can be fully automated in many cases. And when customers don’t pay bills on time, you should have a collection process in place.
VIII. Reporting and Analysis
By looking at traditionally isolated processes (such as sales, order management, and accounts receivable) and viewing the entire quote-to-cash process as one journey, you can better understand the inner workings of operations and accounting. It’s also a way of trying to find shortcomings or potential areas for improvement so you can convert more leads and speed up payment to increase cash flow.
The dashboards displayed in your ERP software can help you see KPIs and other metrics at a glance to provide you with information about QTC operations. In the easy-to-understand visuals, you can see things like change rate, revenue, and pending days sales. One of the main benefits of ERP software is that data from all these disparate areas can be aggregated into a single digital space so that you can easily monitor every step in the cash citation process.
Advantages of Netsuite Quote to Cash
After you must have understood what NetSuite quote to cash is let’s look at the advantages of NetSuite quote – Careful analysis of the Netsuite Quote To Cash process can lead to various benefits, including increased revenue, improved cash flow, and increased overall efficiency.
Think about each step that begins after you make a quote to the client. From sales to order fulfillment, inventory management, invoicing, accounts receivable, and more. There are many opportunities to improve processes and automate repetitive tasks that can benefit your company, including everything from more productive sales teams to fewer quote and proposal errors and faster order and invoice fulfillment.
Ultimately, the improved QTC process helps enhance customer experience which leads to repeat business and increased revenue. Improving inefficiencies should also help reduce costs. Spending time at each stage of the customer lifecycle can help you identify areas where you can best automate to reduce costs and improve customer experience.
Netsuite Quote to Cash Automation
As technology develops at lightning speed, so are the areas of possible automation. Some of the main possibilities for automation include repetitive or repetitive tasks that require a lot of manual effort. From data entry to billing, there are likely many areas of your business function within the QTC process that could benefit from automation. Depending on the size, industry, and type of business, automation can look very different.
In addition, you will need the technology and tools to make this possible. ERP software is ideal for automating QTC processes because all of your business data is aggregated into a single digital ecosystem, rather than living in separate silos. Here are some places your company might consider automation.
I. Quote
Gathering different information and data from different spreadsheets to compile quotes is a cumbersome and time-consuming process. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software can simplify this process for your sales team by automating quotes and sending them to potential customers who have requested them.
Configuration, Price, and Quotation (CPQ): This process is ideal for a personal approach to sales. Customize discounts, promotions, and even products with exact prices and product information collected from data within your ERP system.
II. Contracting
After placing an order or making a purchase, the ERP software can start an automated ordering process. This can be integrated with an online shopping portal, so after you make a purchase, the picking, packing, and shipping processes start automatically. Preconfigure inventory policies (such as last in, first out) and integrate with carriers so that print labels are generated when exact orders are filled.
III. Invoicing
Sending accurate invoices instantly helps encourage more on-time payments. After placing orders, invoices can be sent or scheduled automatically using the finance management software. It can also track payments and send reminders for bills that are past due. And with online bill payments, you’ll get paid faster while making it easier and faster for your customers.
IV. Insightful Reporting
Gone are the days when you need to send a request to your IT department to collect data from across the company and generate custom reports. Alternatively, easy-to-understand visuals that provide insight into the different stages in your QTC process can be made available to you through Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Pre-configured dashboards serve KPIs for order management, finance, and more, while still offering you the option to customize reports to meet your unique business needs.
V. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enhance your customers’ experiences with automated CRM systems. This type of software can help you track all communications with customers, improve customer service, and help generate leads across a wide range of industries.
Manage The Netsuite Quote To Cash Process Using ERP
Instead of working with many different programs or using paper or email submission forms, ERP software can connect disparate regions involved in QTC operations. This way, you can find customer details, sales stats, past and potential sales details, and much more from dashboards that display quick information. You can also dig into metrics and KPIs to further investigate the data.
The benefits of ERP software are more than just communicating data in a single digital environment. Software modules can also help with individual parts of processes. For example, after receiving a customer’s order, this purchase and interaction history is automatically updated in the CRM system. Then it runs the automated order fulfillment process. And you’ll be well versed in your inventory, thanks to our warehouse and supply chain management software.
Stored efficiently, picking and packing speed up. After that, the customer receives the order and an invoice is sent automatically. Finally, you can monitor the entire process to identify potential bottlenecks or areas Optimize so that customers have more positive interactions, receive their orders in a timely manner and your company is paid quickly.
The quote for the cash process combines sales, order management, fulfillment, invoicing, accounts receivable, and more. It begins when a potential customer takes a concrete step – a quote is submitted. It follows each step in the process as the customer makes a purchase, orders are fulfilled, invoices are sent and invoices are paid.
Effective QTC processes actually finish by examining every step of the process to identify bottlenecks so your business can convert more customers, fill orders instantly, and get paid. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is a key component in analyzing each step of the QTC process. In addition to improving efficiency through automation and other steps, it can produce insightful reports on the performance of an OTC process.
Netsuite Quote To Cash – Frequently Asked Questions
What does CPQ mean?
CPQ is an acronym for Configure, Price, and Quote. It represents a stage in the quote-to-cash process where the quote is customized and created for the customer.
What is the cash quotation process?
The Quote to Cash process is every step of the customer journey from the moment a quote or offer is delivered to the time a purchase is made and payment is received.
What is the quotation process for an order?
Represents the stages of the sales cycle from the time a customer’s quotation is submitted until the quotation and request are accepted. Quote-to-order is part of the quote-to-cash process.
What is the process of converting an order into cash?
The money order is part of the quote-to-money process. This represents the stages of sales from the time a customer’s order is placed until payment is received and processed.
Conclusion – Netsuite Quote To Cash
Netsuite Quote To Cash – The quote-to-cash process includes everything your business needs from the time you give a potential customer a quote for your product or service until they make a purchase, the product or service is delivered and the payment is collected.
