This solar installer's quote-to-cash cycle — from a signed quote to the invoice actually being paid — averaged 45 days. Most of that time wasn't the customer being slow to pay; it was internal delays before the invoice was even sent.
This case study covers where the 45 days actually went, and how the team cut it to 21.
Where the 45 Days Actually Went
- •5–7 days between a signed quote and the project being scheduled for installation.
- •10–14 days of installation and inspection, largely unavoidable and not the target of this fix.
- •7–10 days between project completion and someone in billing being told the job was done.
- •5–8 days for the invoice to actually go out once billing knew.
The Real Bottleneck Wasn't the Customer
Roughly 12 to 18 of the 45 days were pure internal delay — time spent waiting for someone to notice a project was complete and manually notify billing, not time spent waiting on the customer at all.
What Changed
- 1.Connected project-completion sign-off directly to the billing module, removing the manual notification step entirely.
- 2.Auto-generated the invoice from the same project record the quote was built from, instead of re-entering line items.
- 3.Added automatic payment reminders at 7, 14, and 21 days instead of relying on someone remembering to follow up.
The Results
- •Average quote-to-cash cycle dropped from 45 days to 21 days.
- •Time between project completion and invoice sent dropped from 12–18 days to same-day.
- •No new hires were added to sales, operations, or billing during the change.
How ZEP360 Connects Quote to Cash
ZEP360 keeps a project's quote, execution status, and invoice as one connected record — so billing doesn't have to wait to be told a job is done, and an invoice doesn't require retyping line items that already exist on the original quote.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did installation time itself get shorter too?
Not meaningfully — installation and inspection still take roughly 10 to 14 days. The 24-day reduction came entirely from removing the internal delay between project completion and invoicing.
Do automatic payment reminders annoy customers?
This team reported no increase in complaints — the reminders are scheduled and consistent rather than ad hoc, which customers generally found more predictable, not more intrusive.
