How do you benchmark collections performance / DSO?

November 23, 2025

by a searcher from Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires in United States

For operators in abatement businesses (with complex billing cycles): how do you benchmark whether your collections performance is actually strong? What’s considered gold standard DSO performance in businesses where DSO involves multiple billing parties and long approval chains? What actions have meaningfully improved collections speed?

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Reply by a professional
in Austin, TX, USA

Thanks Luke, and great question! In industries like abatement, remediation, or environmental services where billing cycles involve multiple parties, field tickets, sign offs, and long approval chains, DSO can be misleading unless you benchmark it against the true operating cycle. I typically look at DSO in three ways: contractual DSO based on client terms, operational DSO from job completion to invoice, and financial DSO from invoice to cash. Strong operators in complex billing businesses tend to sit in the 45 to 65 day range, while anything under 50 days is generally considered top tier performance. The biggest improvements usually come from tightening the operational side such as same week field ticket submission, real time approval workflows, standardized documentation packets, pre billing audits, and pushing clients toward electronic approvals. When operators get disciplined about the “paperwork chain,” collections speed improves meaningfully even if the actual customer payment terms do not change. If you can consistently keep the total cycle under 60 days, you are performing exceptionally well for this type of work.

Reply by an admin
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Portland, OR, USA

^redacted might be able to help with Collections / DSO. If you know someone that can help, please tag them here (Shift 6).

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