Companies Rethink Invoicing as a Customer Experience Strategy

Watch more: The Digital Shift With North’s Greg Gorman

Back-office details don’t inspire much excitement. But for all that they may be overlooked, when back-office detail is executed poorly, it can derail even the best laid front-office plans.

Think of the humble invoice. Now think of trying to pay a poorly designed one.

“Gone are the days where you can have a great product and a great service, and your invoices aren’t any good,” North Vice President of Product Management Greg Gorman told PYMNTS.

Companies invest heavily in product design, onboarding flows and customer success, yet can often undermine those efforts at the point where money changes hands. A confusing invoice, limited payment options or poorly timed reminder can introduce friction that slows payment and erodes trust, regardless of how strong the underlying product may be.

That friction has measurable consequences: slower payments, higher delinquency rates and unnecessary strain on customer relationships.

Invoicing design has a direct impact on speed to cash, forecasting accuracy and working capital. In an environment where CFOs are under pressure to drive more operational resiliency with less, these downstream effects may matter.

Predictable Revenue Runs on Invisible Operations

The push toward recurring invoicing and subscription-based models has raised the stakes even further. Predictable revenue is now a cornerstone of valuation, but predictability depends on systems that work reliably in the background.

The best systems, Gorman said, are the ones users never think about.

“When I walk into a room, I flip the light switch on, and the lights come on. I’m not thinking about the wiring in my house,” he said, adding that invoicing, at its best, should work the same way, reliably, and without constant user intervention.

Read more: Lean Into, Look and Listen to Your Customers Before Taking a Product Leap

The issue is not just channel preference but alignment. Delivery methods must reflect how customers actually operate, not how organizations have historically billed.

Recurring billing failures tend to emerge when expectations change. Expired cards, stolen cards or updated billing information can derail otherwise healthy recurring revenue streams if systems lack proactive safeguards.

“It’s not necessarily the customer experience, it’s not payment acceptance,” Gorman said. “It is my credit card is stolen, I have a new card, and the company doesn’t have an account update tool.”

The solution, he added, is not reactive customer service but proactive communication. Advanced invoicing systems increasingly notify customers ahead of time when anomalies are likely, reducing surprise and preserving trust.

“The less unexpected surprises that you can provide to customers, the better everything works,” Gorman said.

Driving Speed to Cash

Few topics create more anxiety for finance leaders than overdue invoices. Automated reminders promise efficiency, but they can also risk alienating customers if handled poorly.

Gorman cited research from his team that highlighted three customer segments: those who pay immediately, those who pay around the due date and those who pay late.

Automation primarily exists for the latter two groups, not as a blunt enforcement tool but as a safety net. Life happens, and when it does, invoices can slip down to-do lists.

“The best way for a business to think about overdue invoices is to take those actions where they never get to the stage where they’re delinquent,” Gorman said. Reminders before the due date, on the due date, and after can be calibrated to reflect real human behavior rather than punitive escalation.

The key, he added, is simplicity. “Who is it from? What’s it for? How much is it for? And then … make it easy for them to pay.

“The less steps and the less friction you have inside of the process,” Gorman said, “the more likely that customer is to complete the action you want.”

As invoicing grows more central to revenue strategy, executives are demanding better visibility into what’s happening across receivables. Traditional aging reports no longer suffice.

“It’s bridging that gap between not just what is happening with an invoice,” Gorman said, “but moving to that next level where you’re providing the why.”

That can include understanding delivery rates, open behavior, payment timing and customer hesitation. While no dashboard can fully explain human decision-making, richer data allows leaders to move from reactive problem-solving to proactive design.

As invoicing technology matures, businesses face a final strategic choice: how deeply to integrate it into their own systems. Regardless of deployment model, certain capabilities are nonnegotiable: PCI compliance, mobile-first design, responsive interfaces and real-time data exchange. Beyond those, leaders should scrutinize every step in the invoicing process and ask a simple question: does this add value, or does it add friction?

“There’s a best solution for each business,” Gorman emphasized, not a universal winner.