Originally published in Accounting Today
Billing disputes are rarely the result of a single bad invoice. They are the visible symptom of a deeper breakdown between how work is delivered, how it is priced, and how it is recorded financially.
For professional services firms, that breakdown slows collections, inflates days sales outstanding and introduces unnecessary friction into client relationships. More importantly, it creates downstream challenges in GAAP revenue recognition, where unclear scope and inconsistent billing make it difficult to align invoices with GAAP-compliant performance obligations.
Reducing disputes is not about chasing collections more aggressively. It’s about designing billing processes that are structurally aligned with how work is performed and how revenue is recognized.
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