Send Your Invoice Faster: How Tabs Turned A CFO Headache Into Cash Flow
Rebecca Schwartz chose one of the toughest categories in tech-enterprise finance-and focused on a single, boring truth: cash moves when invoices move. Her company, Tabs, just closed a $55 million Series B led by Lightspeed, bringing total funding to more than $91 million. The bet is simple: use AI to erase the dead time between "work delivered" and "invoice sent."
For finance leaders, this isn't hype. It's working capital. If your team waits days or weeks to bill, your DSO grows, your cash conversion cycle stretches, and your collections team inherits a mess.
The Insight That Built Tabs
Most companies tolerate invoicing lag because it's embedded in process, approvals, and systems. That delay is expensive. Schwartz's four-word directive-"send your invoice faster"-zeroes in on a lever CFOs can pull without changing pricing, product, or headcount.
Tabs' approach: detect billable events across contracts, POs, time logs, usage data, and milestones; auto-generate compliant invoices; route for approval; deliver through the customer's preferred channel; and track status to resolution. No theatrics-just cycle-time compression.
Why Enterprise Buyers Say Yes
- Lower DSO and a shorter cash conversion cycle.
- Higher first-pass yield on invoices (fewer disputes, fewer credits).
- Collections effort focused on exceptions, not manual follow-ups.
- Cleaner revenue operations: tighter links across CRM, ERP, and billing.
- Predictable cash forecasts from faster, more consistent billing.
A Practical Playbook For CFOs This Quarter
- Map the quote-to-cash path from contract to cash application. Highlight every approval, handoff, and data source that adds hours or days.
- Set a service-level: invoices out within 24 hours of delivery or milestone completion. Track it weekly.
- Auto-generate invoices from source data: contracts, POs, timesheets, usage meters. Standardize templates and line-item rules.
- Integrate CRM and ERP so opportunities, POs, and fulfillments trigger billing without re-keying.
- Deliver invoices in the customer's channel: e-invoicing portals, EDI, email with structured attachments, or networks like PEPPOL where applicable.
- Segment dunning by risk and value. Automate reminders and offer flexible terms where it preserves margin.
- Expand payment options (ACH, card, wires) and auto-apply cash with bank feeds and remittance parsing.
- Close the loop: disputed invoice dashboards, root-cause tags, and weekly removal of the top two bottlenecks.
The Metrics That Matter
- DSO and invoice cycle time (work complete to invoice sent).
- First-pass yield: percent of invoices paid without edits or credits.
- Percent of invoices sent within 24 hours of delivery/milestone.
- Electronic delivery rate and customer portal acceptance rate.
- Collections cost per dollar collected and dispute rate by cause.
Quick math: reduce DSO by 10 days on $100M annual revenue and you free roughly $2.74M in working capital (10/365 × $100M). That's before labor savings and fewer write-offs.
Controls, Compliance, And Trust
Speed doesn't mean sloppy. Keep role-based approvals, immutable audit trails, and policy checks at every step. Ensure data lineage back to contracts and POs, log edits, and align with SOC 2 controls and customer billing requirements.
What The Funding Signals
A $55M Series B led by Lightspeed suggests CFOs are prioritizing faster invoicing as a core system, not a nice-to-have. With more than $91M raised, Tabs is positioning invoicing speed as a foundational pillar of the CFO stack-measured in fewer days outstanding, fewer disputes, and cleaner cash flow.
Next Step For Your Team
Pick one business unit. Implement the 24-hour invoice SLA, automate invoice creation from source data, and score disputes weekly. Track DSO and first-pass yield for 60 days. The before-and-after will decide your roadmap.
Need a refresher on DSO? See this primer on Days Sales Outstanding. If you're evaluating tools, this curated list of AI tools for finance is a strong starting point.
