Forget the TACO Trade, B2B Firms Are Betting on Time to Cash

The past six months have been nothing but a tariff headache for CFOs, procurement teams and enterprise back offices.

With the U.S. on Thursday (July 10) threatening additional tariffs of up to 50% on countries like Brazil and materials like copper, the operational migraine that keeping up with each new announcement brings doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.

And while some businesses are implicitly embracing the TACO (the acronym being used for “Trump always chickens out”) trade and counting on the administration ultimately backing down, the most forward thinking B2B firms are betting on time to cash mastery by treating liquidity not just as a financial metric but as a dynamic business asset.

Time to cash (T2C) is a strategic framework that reimagines how enterprises manage the end-to-end flow of money — from invoice issuance to final reconciliation in the bank account. More than a narrow look at days sales outstanding (DSO), T2C spans revenue realization, disbursement strategy, working capital optimization and the underlying technology stack that enables it all.

For chief financial officers (CFOs), that means moving beyond static cash flow reports toward a more real-time, predictive and action-oriented model. Time to cash isn’t just a reporting concern; it’s becoming a core strategic differentiator. Companies that can both accelerate inflows and intelligently manage outflows may be able to enjoy a material advantage in volatility by reinvesting faster, borrowing less and pivoting with precision.

Read more: How B2B Payments Data Turns Customer Retention Into a Growth Strategy 

The CFO as Ecosystem Architect

Time to cash is not new—it’s the cousin of “order to cash” (O2C), a well-established supply chain and finance process. But what’s different today is how holistic and strategic it’s become. Time to cash now encompasses lead qualification, contracting, fulfillment, invoicing, collections and even embedded finance. Every department, from marketing to customer success, is being evaluated on its ability to reduce friction and latency.

“How long is the invoice in the building?” Edenred Pay CFO Joe Denson told PYMNTS during a discussion about payables automation. “Ideally, you’re measuring handling time in minutes, not days. How many people are involved? Fewer is better, as long as separation of duties and controls are preserved. And can I get the data in a way that’s sortable and manageable? … AP automation allows finance staff to stop doing manual tasks like entering invoices or looking up suppliers.”

To help with identifying where businesses sit currently, Visa and PYMNTS Intelligence created a dynamic benchmarking report that can help users take a deeper look into how their DPO (days payable outstanding) and other metrics stack up against peers and outperformers within their chosen industries.

The sales-to-cash cycle remains an operational blind spot in many organizations. But finance teams are beginning to assert more control by partnering with sales, credit and collections to streamline invoicing, reduce disputes and better segment customers by risk profile.

Automation also plays a key role here. Intelligent accounts receivable (AR) systems can tailor outreach based on customer behavior, apply payments at the invoice level and trigger dynamic collections workflows. When orchestrated well, revenue realization becomes a repeatable engine, not a firefighting exercise.

See also: For CFOs, the Tech Stack Is the Business Strategy

Technology alone doesn’t drive velocity. What distinguishes high-performing firms is a cash-first culture. One that embeds liquidity awareness into daily operations across sales, procurement and operations.

In these organizations, cash conversion is a shared KPI. Deal desk terms are evaluated for DSO impact. Procurement teams balance cost and payment terms in tandem. Inventory is managed with liquidity, not just logistics, in mind.

“There’s a lot of change going on, and it all centers around working capital,” David Bork, senior vice president, Boost 100 Business Development at Boost Payment Solutions, told PYMNTS.

Still, PYMNTS Intelligence data has found that tariffs and other supply chain disruptions have forced most middle-market U.S. goods and retail companies into reactive mode. This can result in payments staying stuck in last century, with paper checks and manual data entry still common elements of accounts receivable.

PYNTS Intelligence has also found that when it comes to cash flow, security and convenience, virtual cards offer AP and AR departments a suite of advantages. At the end of the day, B2B companies want a simple, secure, consumer-like digital payments experience, Greg Castro, president of PayTrace by North, writes in a new PYMNTS eBook, “Halftime 2025: Charting the Future of Payments.”

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