Ameris Bank Tells CFOs Faster Invoices Mean Faster Revenue

Watch more: Need to Know With Ameris Bank’s Keith Flynn

In an economy where timing is everything, even incremental acceleration can reshape the entire financial rhythm of a business.

Many companies are still getting paid the old-fashioned way. Paper-based invoicing and rigid payment workflows are quietly slowing cash flow, tying up working capital, and turning the financial “last mile” into one of the biggest — and most overlooked — barriers to efficiency.

Companies no longer lose time because they can’t sell digitally; they lose time because they still get paid analog.

“As quickly as the business community is moving to more digital channels, there’s still a lot of paper in the system,” Ameris Bank Managing Director of Treasury Management Keith Flynn told PYMNTS. “Both in the invoicing side as well as the payment side.”

Companies may have digitized their customer experience and operations, many have but left the financial “last mile” stuck in paper-era workflows. Against the challenges of today’s macro environment, that gap is now increasingly and materially hurting liquidity, efficiency and control.

“Both DSO and DPO are two components of the cash flow or cash conversion cycle. If clients can get those invoices into their customer’s hands quicker and give them some optionality on how to pay, that speeds up that speed-to-revenue cycle,” Flynn said.

That acceleration, in turn, can directly affect liquidity, forecasting accuracy, and even competitive positioning. In a higher-rate environment where capital is no longer cheap, shortening the time between delivering a service and collecting payment is becoming a crucial balance sheet lever.

And as a result, invoicing and collections, once relegated to back-office status, are now becoming arenas for innovation, data visibility and customer experience design.

Why Receivables Modernization Is Finally Having Its Moment

A common misconception about financial workflow modernization is that it always requires wholesale system replacement. In practice, implementation in 2026 is less a technological overhaul and more an exercise in operational translation. Rather than imposing a rigid framework, successful deployments align tools with existing priorities and pain points.

“It’s understanding what’s most important and providing the solution that best suits their unique needs,” Flynn said, noting that businesses are seeking “simplicity” and modern capability simultaneously, and increasingly expect both without losing the nuances of their established processes.

What distinguishes the current wave of receivables modernization from previous automation efforts is its elevation within today’s capital-constrained environment, where shortening the time between invoice issuance and payment receipt can free meaningful liquidity. For some firms, reducing days sales outstanding (DSO) by even a few days equates to millions in available working capital.

“Our approach is to make it easier for our customers to do business,” Flynn said.

How Choice Can Become a Catalyst for Faster Payments

Still, as shown by the ubiquity of digital tools elsewhere, the persistence of analog processes may not simply be a technological lag but one of cultural inertia. Organizations, after all, can tend to treat receivables modernization as disruptive rather than enabling, particularly when existing workflows appear to function adequately.

“People are still stuck in their old processes. They don’t want to change,” Flynn said. “It’s not easy to change something that you’ve been doing for years.”

But one of the more subtle shifts reshaping receivables is the consumerization of B2B payments. As employees accustomed to frictionless personal payment apps influence workplace expectations, businesses are realizing that offering flexibility in how customers pay can materially improve collection times.

“People don’t like to be told how to pay, or when to pay,” Flynn said. “Providing optionality is something business appreciate.”

By allowing customers to select the payment method that best fits their workflow or liquidity preferences, companies can remove one of the most common causes of delayed settlement. In this framing, receivables modernization becomes a customer experience strategy as much as a treasury strategy. The companies that make it easier to pay often get paid first.

Recurring Revenue and Sector Dynamics

Still, while receivables modernization has cross-industry relevance, certain sectors are poised to move faster than others.

“I’d like to think that efficient invoice and payment processing is industry agnostic,” Flynn said. “However, we are expecting higher adoption rates in industries like education, government, nonprofit, property management, and the trades.”

These sectors often manage high volumes of predictable transactions, making them ideal environments for automation. Recurring payment models, in particular, can amplify the value of digitization by transforming what were once monthly manual touchpoints into continuous, low-friction processes.

The transformation may not carry the glamour of AI-driven marketing or immersive digital platforms, but its impact is arguably more foundational. As Flynn’s clients are discovering, the path to modernization doesn’t always run through customer-facing technology. Sometimes, it begins with the invoice.

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