The 30-Minute Miracle: How Sarah Saved Quarter-End Before Lunch

If you’ve ever walked out of a collections call with your CFO feeling like you’re trying to stop a $100 million cash flow gap with a page full of notes and a lot of anxiety, you aren’t alone. We’ve all been there — usually two weeks before quarter-end, when the phrase “Wall Street guidance” starts to sound a lot less like a target and more like something to be wary of.

At SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026, we didn’t just talk about “Autonomous Finance.” We showed what happens when your Treasury Assistant collaborates with Finance Agents in real-time to solve pressing problems that typically take weeks of conversation and negotiation.

But what does that look like in practice?

The $100 million gap (and the 30-minute solve)

Meet Sarah, an AR & Treasury Manager at Meridian Energy. Her morning started with a nightmare: a $100 million operating cash flow shortfall. The constraint? No new debt allowed on the balance sheet. In the old world, Sarah would have spent at least a week in “Excel hell,” chasing late payers and negotiating.

In the world of Autonomous Finance, Sarah turned to Joule, which drew on the Treasury Assistant as the orchestrator. The Treasury Assistant worked with the Collections Agent, the Cash Positioning Agent, and the Working Capital Agent to give her an actionable outcome.

By the time she finished her coffee, her Working Capital Agent had already:

Identified $8 million in repayments that were posted that morning.
Flagged $20 million in fast-trackable receivables from a customer based on historical recovery patterns.
Narrowed down the remaining $72 million to a Taulia Receivables Finance recommendation. It did so after comparing various financing options and providing a clear recommendation.

Total time elapsed? Thirty minutes.

Sarah didn’t just find the cash; she sent a full proposal to her CFO’s desk before the morning was over.

From firefighting to future-proofing

But Sarah didn’t stop there. Once the fire was out, she went on the offensive. She went from React to Plan.

Most CFOs know their “trapped cash” exists, but finding it is like looking for a needle in a global supply chain haystack. Sarah’s Working Capital Agent benchmarked the company’s DPO against top-quartile peers and found $85 million just sitting there.

Within minutes, the Working Capital Agent had a supplier prioritization sheet and a rollout plan sent to Procurement for further discussion. Sarah’s Finance function just became a proactive partner for Procurement, which will make adoption of the program much more likely (and a whole lot smoother).

The “silent” guardian

Perhaps the most impressive part of the showcase was when Sarah didn’t ask for help. Autonomous Finance was proactively monitoring indicators in the background. The Liquidity Stress Index detected a behavioral shift in 14 suppliers — signals that typically precede credit events by months.

Without Sarah lifting a finger, the agent cross-referenced her company’s existing SAP Taulia programs, found a global multi-funder path through a local bank, and prepared the outreach.

With this, Sarah was able to protect, mitigating a $155 million risk before it even hit the news cycle.

The bottom line

Everything we showed in Orlando isn’t a “roadmap” slide or a “maybe one day” vision. It’s the Autonomous Finance in action. We believe that every tool you invest in should compound in value for your company.

When your Autonomous Finance handles the routine reconciliations and risk-sensing, you start being an enterprise value architect — holding the reins and leading the company towards its most important goals. And frankly, that sounds a lot more fun than chasing customers for an invoice.

Want to see Sarah’s day in action? Contact us today to arrange a demo.