Revenue is only as reliable as the contract, delivery evidence, invoice and collectability behind it.
Sales operations and finance controller
Daily operations, monthly reconciliation
Approve customer and credit terms.
Customer master and credit approval.
Customer creation and credit approval should precede the sale. Contract terms determine price, taxes, acceptance, billing milestone, refund and collection rights.
Invoices should arise from delivery or service evidence, not quarter-end targets. Manual invoices, credit notes and cancellations deserve heightened review.
Receivables need ageing by due date, dispute and responsible owner. Bad-debt decisions should use evidence and approval rather than merely clearing old balances.
| Control | What it covers | Operating rule |
|---|---|---|
| Customer setup | Identity, credit limit and tax data are approved. | Prevent duplicate or risky accounts. |
| Order and delivery | Commercial approval and performance are evidenced. | Link milestones to billing. |
| Billing | Invoice and tax treatment follow the contract. | Control manual entries. |
| Collection | Receipts, credits and bad debts are reconciled. | Age disputes separately. |
Report gross billing, recognised revenue, collections and overdue receivables separately so management cannot confuse growth with cash conversion.
Review sales incentives for behaviours that encourage premature billing, unapproved discounts or poor-quality customers.
Record the decision, owner, due date and evidence expected. A verbal explanation should become an approved working, board note, contract amendment, statutory filing or reconciliation before the item is treated as closed.
Rules, forms, thresholds and procedures can change. Use the latest official source and the actual company facts rather than copying a prior-year control or another entity’s legal position.
Classify every exception as a timing difference, data error, missing document, legal non-compliance, control-design gap or control-operating failure. This prevents management from treating fundamentally different problems as one ageing list.
The exception file should show amount or exposure, root cause, immediate correction, preventive action, owner and board-escalation threshold. Repeated low-value issues can become material when they reveal weak systems or management override.
Close the item only after the evidence agrees across source documents, books, portal data and management reporting. A screenshot or email promise is not equivalent to a completed filing, lender waiver, signed contract or reconciled ledger.
The control should operate across the full transaction population, not only the samples management expects a reviewer to inspect. For this topic, the key stages are customer setup, order and delivery, billing, collection. Each stage should identify the source system, preparer, reviewer, deadline and evidence retained.
A useful management review asks whether the legal document, accounting entry, bank movement, tax treatment and public filing describe the same event. Differences may be valid, but they should be reconciled through a dated working rather than explained from memory during audit or diligence.
Materiality should determine escalation, not whether the company keeps a record. Repeated small exceptions can show weak master data, unclear authority, system bypass or management override. Root cause and preventive action should therefore be documented separately from the immediate correction.
Control evidence should show operation, not merely design. A policy document proves what management intended; a reconciliation, access review, approval log or exception report proves whether the control actually worked during the period.
Manual journals, spreadsheet uploads, administrator access and post-close changes deserve additional scrutiny because they can bypass automated workflows. The reviewer should assess both the entry and the reason normal processing was not used.