Of the aforementioned factors that hamper the accuracy of an A/R cash forecast, Treasurers have limited control over the macro-economic factors & market dynamics.
The other factors such as inconsistent customer behavior, lack of visibility into A/R cash flow data & tool based limitations could be addressed if treasurers enforce the following methodologies into their forecasting process:

2.1 Regular Revision of A/R cash forecasts:

Most cash forecasts are 60-70% accurate, and this limited range of accuracy is attributed to inherent errors within excel and manual data gathering processes
However, regular revision of cash forecasts helps the treasurer change the assumptions regularly, re-look at the A/R data and tweak the forecast models for better forecast accuracy vis-a-vis reduction invariance.

2.2 Gain Visibility into All A/R Cash Flows:

To drive better visibility into A/R cash flows, Treasury teams should:

• Know the business’s markets: The first step to track A/R across regions, entities, and company codes and then drill down on nuances of ‘law of the land’ such as regulations, currencies, etc.
• Knowing the customers: Once the understanding of the market is established, the next step is to know thy customer, their geo-specific business unit, their payment terms, and their credit scores. This helps in understanding which customer is likely to pay on time and which one is most likely to default.
• Integrating the information to the central A/R forecast: The final step is to build and consolidate all the A/R cash forecasts into a central forecast; that could be used to predict global weekly, daily & monthly cash forecasts.

Gain Visibility Into All Cashflows