Stopping Revenue Leakage: Why 90+ AR Must Drive Your Workflow
Revenue leakage isn’t always a denial problem. Often, it’s a workflow problem.
Most AR teams aren’t struggling because they aren’t working hard. They’re stretched. When staffing is tight, work naturally goes to what feels urgent and visible: new submissions, fresh denials, quick follow-ups, and anything that can close fast. In the moment, that logic makes perfect sense.
But it comes with a cost that shows up quietly.
When 90+ day AR becomes “later,” it doesn’t sit still. It grows. It gets harder. It takes more touches to resolve. And over time, organizations lose collectible revenue—not in one dramatic failure, but through steady, avoidable drift.
That’s revenue leakage: money that should be collected, but isn’t (or arrives far too late) because the operating system of AR isn’t built to reach it consistently.
The pattern: “current-first” creates a 90+ backlog that drains the whole team
In many organizations, prioritization becomes triage:
keep today moving
clear the easiest items
respond to what just came in
prevent new accounts from aging
All of that is reasonable. The issue is what happens next: 90+ becomes the leftover pile.
And leftover work rarely gets the best thinking, time, or continuity. It gets interrupted. It gets restarted. Ownership gets fuzzy. Notes get inconsistent. Staff waste time re-reading account history just to remember what happened last time.
The outcome is predictable:
more touches per account
more time spent searching, reworking, and escalating
slower cash
higher write-off risk
a team that stays busy without getting ahead
Eventually, the 90+ backlog starts to affect current AR too. The larger it gets, the more attention it demands—pulling time away from prevention and clean execution.
That’s the trap: current-first creates more 90+, and more 90+ makes current AR harder to protect.
Why 90+ must become the driver, not the cleanup
90+ AR isn’t only older. It’s where complexity lives:
repeated payer friction
missing or inconsistent documentation
unclear ownership across teams
unresolved denial root causes
broken escalation paths
multi-step follow-up that gets interrupted
If 90+ is treated like cleanup, the hardest work becomes optional. That design almost guarantees leakage, because the work that needs consistency receives the least of it.
When the 90+ project drives the workflow, the system changes in practical ways:
the hardest revenue gets structured attention first
barriers surface earlier instead of months later
recurring issues get corrected upstream
follow-up becomes decisive, not repetitive
current AR stays cleaner because the organization isn’t constantly catching up
The goal is not to ignore current AR. The goal is to stop manufacturing tomorrow’s backlog by treating today’s 90+ as a side task.
Revenue leakage often starts as time leakage
Aged AR doesn’t only leak money. It leaks time.
When there isn’t a clear 90+ workflow, you see the same time drains over and over:
reviewing the same account repeatedly
making the same calls without a new outcome
waiting on documents with no defined owner
unclear next steps, so the account circles back
escalations that vary by person instead of policy
That time loss is expensive—and it’s also why 90+ doesn’t shrink. The process creates more work than it resolves.
Fixing leakage usually isn’t about pushing harder. It’s about designing a workflow where every touch moves the account forward with clarity.
What it looks like when 90+ drives the workflow
Here are four operating moves that keep the 90+ project in the driver’s seat.
1) Protect dedicated 90+ capacity that cannot be borrowed
If 90+ time can be “temporarily” reassigned, it will be reassigned every week.
Protect it intentionally through specific staff assignment, scheduled blocks, or a rotating 90+ role with non-negotiable rules. This isn’t rigidity—it’s realism. Aged AR improves only when it receives consistent attention.
2) Segment 90+ by complexity, not just aging
Not every 90+ account deserves equal time. Segment by signals that predict effort and outcome—payer behavior patterns, documentation completeness, denial category, number of touches without resolution, and whether the account has a clear next action or is genuinely blocked.
This prevents teams from spending hours on accounts that require upstream fixes before follow-up can succeed.
3) Standardize next-step clarity to reduce repeated touches
A common leakage pattern is activity without closure. Make a rule: every touch must end with a defined next step—what’s needed, who owns it, when it’s due, and what “resolved” means.
If the next step is unclear, the account returns. That’s how time leakage turns into revenue leakage.
4) Use 90+ insights to fix upstream causes
The 90+ backlog isn’t only a collection problem. It’s an evidence trail.
Track recurring barriers and close the loop back to documentation workflows, coding and charge capture patterns, submission rules, payer escalation paths, and internal handoffs. This is how 90+ becomes a driver for the entire revenue cycle—because it forces the organization to address what keeps creating aged AR in the first place.
The outcome: predictable collections, fewer touches, less rework
When 90+ drives the workflow, teams typically see changes that matter quickly:
fewer repeated touches per account
clearer ownership and escalation paths
reduced aging velocity
more predictable cash outcomes
less stress, because the backlog stops growing silently
Stopping revenue leakage isn’t a one-time cleanup. It’s a workflow design decision.
If your system is built around “keep up with today,” it will keep producing more 90+ tomorrow. The shift is to let the 90+ project drive how work is prioritized, structured, and resolved—so the hardest revenue stays reachable every week, not only when things become urgent.
If your team is stuck in current-first mode because resources are tight, the fastest way to reduce revenue leakage is to design a 90+ driver workflow that reduces rework and clarifies follow-up. Zybex helps teams find where leakage happens and build AR workflows that support consistent resolution—not constant catch-up.