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Accounting has evolved significantly in recent years, and adopting the right accounting practices is crucial for businesses aiming to maintain financial accuracy and operational efficiency. Companies that invest in robust finance and accounting services not only ensure compliance but also gain insights that drive strategic decision-making.

In this article, we explore key accounting practices that enhance financial workflows and integrate modern processes such as Purchase to Pay, Order to Cash, and Record to Report.

1. Implement Accurate Record-Keeping

One of the cornerstone accounting practices is meticulous record-keeping. Accurate records form the foundation of reliable finance and accounting services, enabling businesses to track expenditures, revenue, and liabilities efficiently. Digital record-keeping tools and automated ledgers reduce errors and save time, ensuring your financial data is always up-to-date.

2. Automate Routine Processes

Automation is a growing trend in accounting practices. By automating tasks within Purchase to Pay, Order to Cash, and Record to Report workflows, businesses can minimize manual errors, accelerate invoice processing, and improve cash flow management. Automation also provides valuable analytics, helping finance teams make informed decisions faster.

3. Strengthen Internal Controls

Effective accounting practices include implementing strong internal controls. These controls safeguard assets, prevent fraud, and ensure compliance with regulatory standards. Organizations leveraging advanced finance and accounting services can establish approval hierarchies, periodic reconciliations, and audit trails that enhance transparency and accountability.

4. Maintain Consistent Financial Reporting

Consistency in financial reporting is a critical accounting practice that builds trust with stakeholders. Leveraging integrated Record to Report solutions ensures that financial statements are accurate, timely, and compliant with reporting standards. This practice enables management to monitor performance, forecast budgets, and make strategic investments with confidence.

5. Optimize the Purchase to Pay Process

The Purchase to Pay cycle is essential for managing procurement efficiently. Best accounting practices focus on streamlining vendor management, purchase orders, and invoice approvals. Efficient Purchase to Pay processes reduce bottlenecks, enhance supplier relationships, and provide clear visibility into company expenditures.

6. Enhance Order to Cash Operations

An optimized Order to Cash cycle is vital for revenue management. Businesses implementing structured accounting practices for Order to Cash can accelerate invoice processing, improve collection cycles, and reduce outstanding receivables. Effective management of this cycle directly impacts cash flow, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

7. Focus on Compliance and Risk Management

Compliance and risk management are key pillars of professional accounting practices. Businesses using comprehensive finance and accounting services must stay updated with taxation laws, accounting standards, and financial regulations. Regular audits and risk assessments help identify gaps and mitigate potential issues before they escalate.

8. Continuous Staff Training

Continuous training of finance teams is another vital accounting practice. Employees should be well-versed in accounting software, automated workflows, and evolving financial regulations. Training ensures that your Purchase to Pay, Order to Cash, and Record to Report processes are executed with precision and efficiency.

Conclusion

Adopting robust accounting practices is essential for businesses seeking accuracy, compliance, and operational efficiency. Integrating automated solutions within finance and accounting services and optimizing workflows like Purchase to Pay, Order to Cash, and Record to Report ensures a seamless financial ecosystem.

Keeping tabs on the finances of a massive company is a whole different beast than managing a small business's books. You're dealing with a much bigger operation, a lot more at stake, and an intricate web of complexities that includes multiple entities, different countries, currencies, and regulatory hoops to jump through. And no matter how good your in-house accounting team is and how slick your software is, it's just not enough to get the job done right.

That's why, more and more of the large US companies are looking to bring in outside accounting services to handle the really key financial chores in their organization: Procure to Pay, Record to Report, and Order to Cash. When these three processes are humming along, the whole financial machine of your business runs smoothly. But when they're not, the knock-on effects are bad news - delayed payments, botched reporting, stalled revenue growth - and they can be pretty costly.

At Corient, we help big companies like yours get these critical functions working better. So what does that look like in real life?

What's Really at Stake When You Get These Three Processes Wrong

Before we talk solutions, let's level with each other about what's on the line.

For a big company processing thousands of transactions every day, even a small mistake or speedbump can quickly snowball into something big. An invoice from a supplier that gets stuck in the approvals process can burn bridges and cost you late fees. A financial close that drags on for three weeks instead of one keeps leaders from making the decisions they need to make to drive the business forward. And a billing dispute that gets hung up in your Order to Cash cycle can tie up capital that should be fueling growth instead.

These aren't edge cases or one-off problems. For most big companies, they're everyday headaches - and they add up to tens of millions lost every year in wasted time, strained relationships and missed opportunities.

The good news is that all three of these processes are pretty much ripe for the picking when you bring the right expertise, technology and structure to bear.

Procure to Pay : Getting From Vendor Invoice to Payment Without Losing Your Mind

Procure to Pay services (you've probably heard it referred to as P2P) is like a big umbrella term that covers everything that happens after your company decides to buy something - right up until the vendor finally gets paid. For bigger companies this process is a whole lot more complicated - it includes procurement, ordering purchases, processing invoices, matching up what you got with what the supplier said was supposed to happen, getting approvals and actually making the payment.

When it all runs smoothly, you don't even notice it's there. But when things start going wrong, it can create a whole bunch of problems - suppliers get frustrated, there are gaps in compliance, payments get made twice, and the finance and accounting  team is drowning in paperwork.

The most common pain points we see in large enterprise P2P systems are:

We get a whole lot of paper or invoices that just don't fit into any system, requiring people to do grunt work just to get them sorted

We see lots of different systems being used for procurement and accounting that are just too disconnected, creating massive data silos

Approval processes that move at a glacial pace, so payments are delayed long past when they were supposed to be made

Lack of visibility into what you owe to whom and how much cash you're committed to laying out

What really good Procure to Pay accounting services look like: Having skilled people and automation working together from the moment you first ask for a purchase until the payment is made. Routine tasks get handled by tech so the pros can focus on Exception cases, vendor queries and making sure your company isn't breaking any rules. This results in quicker payment times, fewer errors, better relationships with your suppliers, and an honest to goodness clear idea of what your company is spending and when it's getting spent.

For large US enterprises managing hundreds of vendors and thousands of monthly invoices, outsourcing P2P accounting services to a specialized provider like Corient means your internal team can focus on strategic procurement and vendor relationships rather than chasing down invoice approvals.

Record to Report: Wrapping Up The Books Faster, Worrying Less

Record to Report — R2R — is the heart and soul of your financial operations. It's where all the key financial activities come together, from journal entry management and account reconciliations, right through to the eventual close.

For big businesses, this process is where all the mess of financial complexity really comes to a head. We're talking about multiple entities, complicated intercompany deals, different accounting rules in different countries, and the weight of regulatory scrutiny all coming together to make R2R one of the toughest tasks on the finance team's plate.

But , the truth is that some big businesses are still trying to get through this process on a combination of manual spreadsheets, outdated systems, and an accounting team that's already stretched to the limit trying to hit an increasingly aggressive close deadline.

The consequences of all this are pretty predictable:

You're running late, and that means management are having to wait even longer for the numbers they need to make decisions

Reconciliation backlogs are building up, and that's creating a steady stream of audit risk and compliance issues

You've got financial data all over the place, and that makes it impossible to know who to trust

Your finance team is spending all their time on transactional work, rather than actually doing the analysis that really matters

So, what does good Record to Report accounting look like? A well-organised, tech-enabled R2R process that brings consistency, speed and accuracy to your close. This means having standardised journal entry workflows, automated reconciliations for all the high-volume accounts, tight control over intercompany elimination processes, and consolidated financial statements that come when they're supposed to – every single time.

At Corient, our Record to Report accounting services are designed with big businesses in mind – businesses that need their close process to be faster, cleaner and more audit-ready. When your books close reliably and accurately, leadership gets the financial visibility they need to make confident decisions – not two weeks after the period has finished.

Order to Cash: Turning Sales Into Cash, And Getting It Faster

Order to Cash Services— O2C — is the process that links up your sales activity with the actual cash in your bank account. It's all about order management, invoicing, credit management, collections, cash application, and dispute resolution.

For big businesses, this is where working capital gets stuck. You've got long invoice cycles, slow collections, manual cash application, and unresolved disputes all slowing things down between when revenue is earned and when it's actually collected.

This matters a great deal at scale. Even a small improvement in Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) for a major business can free up tens of millions in working capital that was previously locked up in receivables.

Common O2C challenges in big businesses include:

You've got high volumes of invoices from complex billing arrangements that slow things down

Your collections processes are a mess, lacking any real prioritisation or follow-up

Manual cash application creates delays and errors in reconciliations

Dispute resolution is stuck in limbo because nobody is taking charge

What does good Order to Cash accounting look like? A disciplined, data-driven O2C process that gets the conversion of revenue into cash moving faster. This means accurate and timely invoicing, proactive collections outreach , automated cash application that matches payments to invoices without any manual involvement, and a structured dispute resolution process that resolves issues quickly rather than letting them drag on.

When your Order to Cash cycle is running well, your DSO decreases, your cash flow improves, and your customer relationships are stronger because billing disputes get resolved quickly and professionally rather than festering for months.

Why Large Enterprises Choose Corient for Accounting Services

There's no shortage of accounting firms to choose from in the US market but what sets Corient apart is a unique blend of deep process knowledge, technology savvy and a genuinely deep understanding of what really matters to big finance operations.

We don't do cookie-cutter solutions - we get to know each client properly, understand what makes their existing systems tick, their biggest headaches and where they want to be. Then we build a delivery model that fits them like a glove - whether that means helping your own finance team get on top of a tricky process thats gone off the rails, taking care of a big function for you or helping turn round a process that's just plain broken. We've got the expertise and the capacity to get it done.

We cover the full procurement to pay, record to report services and order to cash cycle with a team thats 100% plugged into US GAAP, regulatory requirements and what actually works in a big finance operation.

The Bottom Line

For big US companies, getting Procure to Pay, Record to Report, and Order to Cash right is more than just tidying up some finance housekeeping - it's a key part of the business strategy. Faster closes, better cash flow, stronger relationships with suppliers, and solid reliable financial data - all of these things make the business perform better.

If your business is ready to move on from just patching up the odd problem and wants to put in place real accounting services that drive growth then Corient is where the conversation starts.

Want to have a look at what better might look like for your business?

For many growing businesses, finance and accounting can quickly become overwhelming. Between managing expenses, tracking revenue, closing the books, and staying compliant, it often feels like there’s too much to juggle—and not enough visibility into what’s really happening financially.

This is where strong finance and accounting services make a real difference. When your financial processes are structured, connected, and reliable, you’re not just keeping up with the numbers—you’re using them to make smarter decisions and support long-term growth.

At the heart of effective finance operations are three key processes: Procure to Pay services, Order to Cash Services, and Record to Report Services. Together, they create a complete picture of how money moves through your business.

What Do Finance and Accounting Services Really Do?

At a basic level, finance and accounting services ensure your books are accurate and your financial data is reliable. But in practice, they do much more than that.

Well-managed finance and accounting services help businesses:

Understand where money is being spent and earned

Improve cash flow and working capital

Stay compliant with accounting and regulatory requirements

Close books on time without last-minute stress

Gain insights that support better planning and decision-making

Instead of reacting to financial issues after they happen, businesses with strong finance processes stay ahead of them.

Procure to Pay Services: Keeping Spending Organized and Under Control

Every business spends money—on vendors, software, materials, and services. Procure to Pay services manage everything that happens from the moment a purchase is requested to the moment a vendor is paid.

When this process isn’t well managed, problems start to show up: duplicate payments, missing invoices, approval delays, and poor visibility into spending.

A streamlined Procure to Pay process helps businesses:

Track purchases from start to finish

Process invoices accurately and on time

Avoid unnecessary costs and payment errors

Maintain better relationships with vendors

With clear workflows and controls in place, Procure to Pay services give businesses confidence that spending is aligned with budgets and policies.

Order to Cash Services: Turning Sales into Real Cash

Making a sale is only part of the equation. Getting paid—accurately and on time—is just as important. Order to Cash Services cover the full revenue cycle, including order processing, invoicing, accounts receivable, and collections.

When Order to Cash processes break down, businesses often face delayed payments, billing disputes, and unpredictable cash flow.

Optimized Order to Cash Services help businesses:

Send accurate invoices faster

Reduce payment delays and outstanding receivables

Improve visibility into customer balances

Strengthen cash flow and liquidity

A smooth O2C process ensures that revenue doesn’t get stuck in limbo and that cash flow supports day-to-day operations and growth plans.

Record to Report Services: Making Sense of the Numbers

While Procure to Pay and Order to Cash focus on daily transactions, Record to Report Services bring everything together. This process turns raw financial data into clear, reliable financial reports.

Record to Report services typically include journal entries, reconciliations, accruals, fixed assets, and month-end and year-end close activities. When done well, R2R ensures that leadership can trust the numbers they see.

Strong Record to Report Services provide:

Accurate and timely financial statements

Faster, less stressful close cycles

Compliance with accounting standards

Clear insights into business performance

Instead of scrambling at month-end, businesses with solid R2R processes close with confidence.

Why Integration Across Finance Processes Matters

Problems often arise when Procure to Pay, Order to Cash, and Record to Report operate in silos. Data doesn’t flow smoothly, errors increase, and teams spend more time fixing issues than analyzing results.

When these processes are connected, finance teams gain:

A complete, end-to-end view of financial activity

More consistent and accurate data

Fewer manual tasks and rework

Stronger internal controls and governance

Integrated finance and accounting services help businesses move from reactive reporting to proactive financial management.

Supporting Growth with Scalable Finance Operations

As businesses grow, financial complexity grows with them. Transaction volumes increase, reporting requirements expand, and leadership expects faster insights.

Scalable finance and accounting services allow businesses to:

Handle growth without losing control

Adapt to new markets or business models

Improve efficiency without increasing risk

Support leadership with timely, reliable data

Strong financial foundations make growth smoother—and far less stressful.

Finance as a Strategic Partner, Not Just a Back Office

Today’s finance function plays a strategic role in the business. With the right processes in place, finance teams help leaders understand performance, manage risk, and plan for the future.

By aligning Procure to Pay services, Order to Cash Services, and Record to Report Services, businesses can:

Improve cash flow management

Strengthen compliance and controls

Gain better financial visibility

Make confident, data-driven decisions

Finance stops being just about reporting the past and starts shaping what comes next.

Final Thoughts

Reliable finance and accounting services give businesses clarity, control, and confidence. When Procure to Pay, Order to Cash, and Record to Report services work together, finance becomes a powerful enabler of growth—not a bottleneck.

Managing finances shouldn't take away from an organisation's productivity. Unfortunately, for many organisations, finance is an area where organisations have poor productivity levels due to manual processes, disconnected systems and increasing compliance costs. This creates more rework for finance departments and less time on growing their business through technology. Therefore, by taking advantage of modern finance and accounting services to produce the information you need for decision making, finance becomes a business partner and not a bottleneck. 

Today's view of Finance has changed as well, where the focus of finance was to simply close out the books and invoice process and now has expanded to creating better clarity of the financials, a stronger cash flow and enablement of greater confidence and timely informed decision making. Having Procure to Pay services , Record to Report Processes and Order to Cash processes working in sync with each other enables Finance to work as an enabler of the business rather than being a roadblock.

Changes To Finance And Accounting Services

Finance was once regarded as the department responsible for the day-to-day functions of an organisation by processing transactions, maintaining a complete accounting record and meeting a deadline. These basic functions of finance are still relevant but have expanded beyond simply maintaining records and deadlines; business leaders expect finance to provide strategic insight and forecasting. 

Modernised Finance and Accounting Services allow organisations to make the shift away from a reactive finance department looking for a way to fix a problem causing a revenue loss toward a proactive finance department that assists an organisation in the development and implementation of a plan for business growth through the process of developing standard processes and the ability to automate those processes. By implementing standard procedures for record keeping and processes to support automation, organisations improve their ability to gain visibility into financial activities when reviewing operating results and reduce the strain on the day-to-day operations of the organisation in preparing financials.

Procurement and payment services: bring organization to a company's daily purchasing activity

Companies of all types make many types of purchases: 

raw materials, software subscriptions and services. Procurement services manage every stage of the procurement process, from selecting vendors to paying their invoices.

Without an established process in place, invoices can become lost, approval processes may take too long and finance teams are forced to spend large amounts of time seeking answers. The procurement process will provide a more clear and consistent view into purchasing activities.

What does Procurement include?

Vendor onboarding and vendor master data management

Purchase orders and approvals

Completely validated invoices and the three way match.

Accounts Payable and Payment Processing

Reconciliations and Reporting

What will Procurement do for the company?

With properly managed Procurement services, companies gain enhanced visibility into purchasing and limit unnecessary costs. Suppliers get paid on time, suppliers are happy, and Corporate Governance risk is limited.

Most of all: finance teams do not need to put out daily procurement fires; instead, finance teams can concentrate on improving procurement processes and assisting in business operations.

The Significance of Accurate Financial Data and its Relationship with Record to Report Services

Accurate financial data is critical for managers to make decisions about future spending, current staffing levels, and other factors that may affect business operations; therefore, having the most up-to-date information about financial activity helps senior management determine if they have enough information to make informed decisions.

Record to Report Services connect the operational side of a business (i.e., daily transactions) to high-level reporting; therefore, they allow senior management to have complete visibility into the overall financial health of the business and to meet their regulatory obligations to provide an accurate account of the financial performance of the company.

Typical Record to Report Activities

Some activities included in this category include:

- Journal entries and general ledger accounting

- Adjustments/accruals

- Account balance sheet and reconciliations

- Fixed asset and intercompany accounts

- Management Information Systems (MIS) Reports and Financial Statements

The Benefits of Effective Record to Report Processes:

The value of effective Record to Report Services is improved efficiency in the month-end/year-end close process, as well as accelerated reconciliation of financial reports. The result is accurate reporting; the audits are completed on time; the management teams have confidence in the financial data presented to them and are less likely to spend time verifying the numbers. Instead, the management team can spend their time analyzing what the numbers mean and determining how to respond appropriately to subsequent events.

Order To Cash Services – Helping Companies Receive Payment Quicker

Order to Cash Services is an integral part of the cash conversion cycle. Orders received from customers do not count as revenue until the money has been received into the company's bank account. Order To Cash Services cover the entire process of converting customer orders into actual cash, and therefore, are critical for ensuring businesses have sufficient cash flow to operate and for providing satisfactory service to their customers.

Inefficiencies in the Order To Cash process, such as delays in invoice issuance and making billing mistakes, can negatively impact a company's working capital position. A smooth Order To Cash cycle ensures companies bill customers accurately and collect payments in a timely manner.

Services Under The Order To Cash Process

Services under the Order To Cash process include the following:

1. Validating Orders and Performing Customer Credit Checks

2. Creating Invoices and Sending Them Out

3. Managing Accounts Receivable

4. Collecting Payments and Resolving Disputes

5. Applying Cash to Accounts Receivable and Reconciliation of Accounts

Optimizing Order To Cash Services will provide:

1. Timely Issuance of Invoices to Customers

2. Reduced Disputes Regarding Invoices Sent Out

3. Improved Collections on Customer Accounts

As a result, companies will have lower Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and will be able to more accurately forecast their cash flow.

Finally, creating a better customer experience begins with clear and accurate invoices and effective communication with customers regarding their invoices and orders. When customers receive their invoices in a timely manner, they are building trust with the company and strengthening their long-term relationship with the company.

The Benefits of Integrated Finance and Accounting Services

Integrated finance and accounting services enable a more comprehensive view of the entire financial process and significantly improve accuracy and timeliness when it comes to reporting, forecasting or forecasting with respect to estimated revenue arising from future orders. Therefore, when procure-to-pay, record-to-report and order-to-cash operate independently, there is a significant amount of duplication of effort associated with gathering data as well as providing financial reporting. Consequently, this creates uncertainty within an organisation about what financial information is accurate. When all financial processes are connected together as one cohesive unit, the result is that all of the various financial processes are integrated together so that they provide end-to-end visibility across all finance-related processes; they produce consistently accurate (and therefore reliable) data; and they can create faster turnarounds on delivering reports and forecasts.

A primary reason to adopt integrated finance and accounting services is to enhance the confidence of employees because when finance leaders have certainty that they are working with real-time (i.e., real and accurate) information, it enhances their ability to make sound business decisions based on this information.

Automation in Finance

Automation is changing the way finance teams perform their duties. In the past, the accounting department performed all of the functions of the finance department by hand-done. Today, there are numerous ways that technology can streamline operations from invoice processing through to reporting.

As such, the goal of using technology in accounting is not to eliminate human interaction but rather to remove the redundancy of repetitive manual tasks performed by finance employees so they can focus their talents and efforts towards helping the organisation grow, innovate, and improve its performance. Therefore, as a result of automating most of the finance department's functions, finance teams now have more time to provide value-added services to customers and to invest in the long-term future of the organisation.

Why Businesses Choose Outsourced Finance and Accounting Services

Organizations are increasingly taking advantage of outsourced finance and accounting services by sourcing their finance needs from service providers. Businesses receive expert advice and best practice methods from providers that allow them to develop scalable solutions on an as-needed basis. The main advantages of engaging a third party to handle finance functions include:

Expertise: Businesses can tap into a depth of experience that may be difficult to find or retain using internal resources.

Flexibility: Businesses can easily expand their finance services as needed as the business grows. As a result, businesses will save money by reducing staffing and operational expenses.

Consistent Service Delivery: Providers maintain consistent service and a single point of contact for businesses.

Core Focus: Businesses will have more time to spend on their primary objectives because their core business will be less affected by day-to-day financial operations.

Outsourcing enables businesses to maintain their standards of service while also remaining nimble in a rapidly changing marketplace.

At Corient, we believe finance should be transparent, simple, and foster growth for our clients. We offer complete end-to-end finance and accounting services in three distinct areas: Procure To Pay Services, Record To Report Services, and Order To Cash Services. Each service area supports all aspects of a company's financial workflow.

Through Intelligent Automation coupled with best practices, we assist businesses in increasing their productivity by decreasing the amount of time spent performing tasks that are presently done manually, while increasing both cash flow and profitability by improving transparency and control over their finances. We also ensure our clients are compliant with applicable laws and regulations while providing them with the resources necessary to expand their operations into new markets.

Confidence in Moving Ahead

Financial and Accounting Services will continue to focus on providing organizations with an understanding of their finances; without having accurate financials and being able to control that information, organizations will not be able to achieve sustainable growth. When organizations implement a process that integrates the Procure to Pay, Record to Report and Order to Cash functionality, it allows them to build a base for establishing a solid foundation for future growth.

When working with the right financial partner, finance can change from a source of stress to a source of strategic planning.

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