Customer Credit and Invoicing Key Benchmarks: Consumer Products/Packaged Goods Industry

Gain insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of your organization’s processes by benchmarking common business activities. The process group “Perform revenue accounting” (PCF ID:10729) includes processes and activities such as process customer credit and Invoice customer (Hierarchy ID: 9.2.1 in APQC’s Process Classification Framework®). 

Prepared using APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking® in Customer Invoicing and Credit, the table below highlights key performance indicator (KPI) benchmarks for members of the consumer products/packaged goods industry. Organizations can use this information to benchmark and continuously improve their customer credit and invoicing processes. For more information on these measures and metrics, see the Summary of Open Standards Benchmarking Measures: Customer Credit and Invoicing. APQC members can access these and many more related measures in APQC’s Benchmarks on Demand Portal.

Perform Revenue Accounting 

Cost Effectiveness 

Cycle Time

Process Efficiency

Staff Productivity

Process Definitions

9.2 Perform revenue accounting

Comparing revenue targets to reality. Review all transactions and entries passed in final accounts in a year in order to examine profits.

9.2.1 Process customer credit

Evaluating and processing requests for advances. Evaluate credit requests by customers requiring loans to buy products/services.

9.2.2 Invoice customer

Preparing detailed reports of customer purchases. Prepare a commercial document between the seller and customer with details about transaction. Detail the quantity purchased, price of products/services, date, parties involved, unique invoice number, and tax information.

Benchmark Definitions

Cost Effectiveness 

Cost effectiveness measures are those in which two related variables, one of which is the cost and one of which is the outcome related to the expenditure, are used to determine a particular metric value. 

Cycle Time 

Cycle time is the total time from the beginning of the process to the end. This includes both the time spent actually performing the process and the time spent waiting to move forward.

Full-Time Equivalent Employees (FTE)

The number of full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) is the average number of full-time equivalent employees employed during the year for a process/activity. It is calculated by prorating the number of employees and the hours spent performing a process/activity. It assumes that a full-time worker represents 40 hours per week. It includes full-time employees, part-time employees, and temporary workers hired during peak demand periods. It includes only the portion of the employee’s time that relates to or supports the activities identified for a process.

Process Cost Components

Total cost for a process, process group, or function consists of the following five components: personnel, systems, overhead, other, and external/outsourced. Internal/In-house operating cost consists of the first four components (personnel, systems, overhead, and other).

Process Efficiency 

Process efficiency represents how well a process converts its inputs into outputs. A process that converts 100 percent of the inputs into outputs without waste is more efficient than one that converts a similar amount of inputs into fewer outputs.

Staff Productivity 

Staff productivity is a measure of the efficiency of individuals performing specific processes. Measures in staff productivity generally relate the transaction volume or outcome of the process with the effort in terms of full-time equivalent employees to perform the process.

Total Annual Revenue

Total annual revenue is the net proceeds generated from the sale of products or services. It reflects the selling price less any allowances such as quantity, discounts, rebates, and returns. 

• For a business entity that is a support unit, and therefore does not directly generate revenue, the revenue amount for the units supported is used. 

• For government/non-profit organizations, the non-pass-through budget is used. 

• For insurance companies the total amount of direct written premiums, excluding net investment income is used. 

Business entity revenue needs to only include inter-company business segment revenue when the transactions between those business segments are intended to reflect an arm's length transfer price and would therefore meet the regulatory requirements for external revenue reporting.