The Hidden Reality of Public Funding Payment Cycles
If you sell assistive technology (AT) and related services in a publicly funded environment, payment is rarely a simple "deliver, invoice, get paid" story. It's the end of a chain. And that chain doesn't just affect your A/R report—it quietly shapes how much inventory you can carry, how confidently you hire, how fast you can say yes to the next user, and how accurate your cash forecast really is.
Public funding introduces gates that don't exist (or don't matter as much) in typical commercial receivables. Delivery is important, but it often isn't the finish line. Approval scope, acceptance evidence, internal validation, and batch payment scheduling can matter just as much as the product and service you provide. That's why two vendors can do the same quality work and experience wildly different cash timing: one has a clean, validator-friendly story from assessment to acceptance to invoice, and the other has a story that's true—but hard to verify quickly.
The Standard Payment Pattern
Most payment cycles for AT follow a recognizable pattern, even if the labels differ by region or program. It usually starts with an assessment and prescription phase: the user is identified, needs are documented, and a recommended solution is defined. Then comes funding approval or authorization by a public body or a related program administrator, where the solution is confirmed as eligible, sometimes with conditions or limitations. After that, the ordering and supply of devices/equipment kicks in—procurement, shipping, backorders, and substitutions all live here. Then, depending on the type of AT, there may be fitting, training, configuration, or setup services, which can be essential to the outcome but add operational steps and documentation requirements.
Once the work is done, the cycle is still not "done." Documentation and acceptance evidence becomes the real handoff point between your operations and your cash. Invoicing and submission to the relevant payor or intermediary follows, and that submission often triggers a review/validation stage where internal teams reconcile what you billed with what was approved and what was delivered. Payment comes only after that reconciliation clears and your claim enters a scheduled payment run. Even then, post-delivery adjustments can appear: partial approvals, clarifications, corrections, returns, replacements, or follow-on documentation requests that change what gets paid and when.
Where Delays Show Up
Where delays show up is surprisingly consistent. Funding approvals can be slow—sometimes because review queues are long, sometimes because the supporting assessment materials aren't complete or consistent, and sometimes because the payor needs clarification on scope. Documentation gaps are another common culprit, and they're often accidental: missing signatures, unclear dates, mismatched identifiers, inconsistent descriptions, or service notes that don't map cleanly to what was authorized. Ambiguity around what is covered can lead to partial approvals that force rework: the solution is right for the user, but the approved scope may only cover part of it, or it may cover a category while your invoice describes a specific configuration. Finally, even when everything is correct, payor-side processes can be slow because validation and payment scheduling are separate steps, run by different teams, with batch calendars you can't control.
A useful way to visualize this is to separate "work completed" from "payor-ready." You can do everything right operationally and still end up waiting because the payor can't quickly match the authorization, the delivery, and the invoice into one clean, verifiable record.
The Business Impact of Compounding Delays
What this means in practice is that "late payment" is rarely just one late step. It's usually a series of small holds—each reasonable on its own—that compound into a long wait. And because those holds often happen after you've already incurred costs, the business impact lands squarely on you.
Operational Consequences
The operational consequences are not subtle. Inventory carrying becomes a financing decision, not just a service decision: if you stock devices so users get served quickly, you're tying up cash while approvals and validations play out. If you don't stock, your fulfillment speed and reliability can suffer, which can affect referrals and partner confidence. Staffing becomes harder to size because the work isn't evenly distributed—approvals clear in bursts, validation queues release in waves, and suddenly your team is either scrambling or idle. Capacity becomes a ceiling: even with demand, cash timing can limit how many users you can serve at once, how aggressively you can expand, and how confidently you can commit to new service coverage. Supplier dynamics also tighten; if your suppliers want predictable payment but your payor cycle is unpredictable, you end up negotiating from a weaker position, which can mean worse terms or higher costs over time.
For some AT vendors, tightening documentation and forecasting isn't the whole answer—because even a "perfect" submission still moves at the payor's pace. In those cases, it can be worth exploring whether receivables financing is a fit for your model: not as a crutch, but as a way to keep inventory and service capacity steady while you wait. If you're in that camp, MFFG is one option built around public-pay receivables and the documentation realities that come with them.
Mitigation Strategies
Mitigation, at a high level, is less about adding bureaucracy and more about removing ambiguity. The goal is to make each case easy to validate without guesswork. That starts by defining what "done" means at each stage. "Delivered" isn't truly done until acceptance evidence is collected in a form that holds up under review. "Authorized" isn't done until the scope is clear enough that your invoice line items can match it cleanly. "Submitted" isn't done until you have confirmation and a trackable reference that your team can monitor.
Documentation Discipline
Documentation discipline is the lowest-friction lever that often creates the biggest improvement. Standardize how you name and store key documents, so your team can produce a complete "story" quickly: the assessment, the authorization, what was supplied, what services were delivered, and what acceptance evidence supports the claim. When those pieces are consistent and easy to retrieve, validation stops being a scavenger hunt and starts being a checklist.
Process Clarity
Process clarity matters too, especially around coverage interpretation. If partial approvals and clarifications are recurring, treat them as signal. Tighten the way you describe solutions and services so they map to the payor's categories and terminology without needing interpretation. If substitutions are common due to supply constraints, build a clean substitution workflow that preserves traceability from the authorized solution to what was actually delivered.
Realistic Forecasting
Finally, forecasting should reflect reality, not hope. If your forecast is tied primarily to delivery dates, it will consistently overstate cash certainty. A more realistic approach is stage-based forecasting: track your cases not just by operational progress, but by payment readiness—authorization confirmed, acceptance evidence complete, submitted, validated, scheduled. The more your forecast is anchored to those gates, the fewer surprises you'll face at month-end.