Why does cash from government contracts rarely arrive when your forecast says it should? In this episode, we break down why traditional commercial A/R forecasting fails when applied to public buyers,. Unlike private sector payments driven by "terms," government receivables are gate-driven, meaning payment is often stalled by invisible workflows like acceptance, validation, and coding.

We explore the transition from "vibes-based" percentages to stage-based forecasting, treating your accounts receivable like a pipeline rather than a single pile,. By tagging every receivable to a specific stage—from "ordered" to "queried"—organizations can identify exactly where the internal or external bottlenecks live.

Key takeaways include:

• The Three-Scenario Approach: How to build Base, Slow-pay, and Stressed forecasts to catch cash tightness early.

• Queries as First-Class Events: Why treat a query as a major state change that requires specific evidence to resolve.

• Operational Discipline: The importance of a weekly cadence to update stages based on reality (like portal status) rather than just aging.

• The Practical Ledger: Why your FP&A team needs evidence links and clear owners for every blocker to prevent "surprise" misses.

Learn how to transform your financial forecasting into a defendable view of reality that improves both your accuracy and your actual cash flow.

Read the article here.