7 Best Practices to Automate your Accounts Receivable Process

Our Customer Portal enables customers to easily access and pay their outstanding invoices in a centralized secure billing portal. In turn, you’ll receive faster payments from customers and gain end-to-end visibility of the audit trail. First it must be created or generated to include all relevant information related to the transaction of charging money for a product or service provided to your customer. Then it must be sent or transmitted to the customer in a timely manner with reminders and even escalations sent thereafter if payment is not received. Once you do receive the customer’s payment, the invoice must be reconciled with the remittance – along with any other supporting data and documentation – to wrap up the process. Different AR automation tools offer different features with varying levels of automation.

  • The beauty of our Accounts Receivable automation solution is in its flexibility.
  • In many industries, businesses must render some goods and services upfront, but failing to collect payments for those services can quickly lead to trouble.
  • “Account Receivable (AR) is an accounting term related to money your customers owe you for goods or services purchased on credit”.
  • Helping your clients collect their cash faster will deepen your relationship with them.

Collecting cash is the lifeblood of any business, and as an accounting firm, we need to know how to help our clients collect cash in the easiest way possible so that their businesses can grow. When a customer disputes a charge on an invoice, it is crucial to easily deduct the disputed charge and re-invoice the customer. This way you’ll help to accelerate the resolution of the issue and shorten the wait time for the proper payment.

Access to real-time data.

This includes performing a credit check to retrieve their credit score from credit agencies, verifying other financial information, and asking for trade references to assess their creditworthiness. PCI-DSS is the global security standard for all companies that store, manage, or send sensitive authentication and cardholder data. Also, PCI-DSS establishes a baseline degree of safety for customers and helps reduce any data breaches or potential threats throughout the payment ecosystem. Furthermore, manual labour in non-automated or partially automated O2C processes can slow a company’s operation, resulting in delays and customer discontent. Also, in some scenarios non-automated O2C cycles might pave the way to more errors since individuals are more prone to make mistakes when putting data or switching between systems.

After all, the right implementation for a business could offer customers with a variety of payment choices. You can choose between automated clearing house (ACH) payments or use peer-to-peer payment apps. And, once a company receives payments, the system can send automated payment receipt notices to clients. Often, businesses and companies send invoices by email, as it’s the quickest way to get paid by the clients. But, in most of the scenarios, clients validate the information and then make the payment, consuming a lot of time. Working with a solution provider, such as Corcentric, ensures you benefit from best practice integration between ERP or other accounting systems, EIPP platform and with your customers’ accounts payable processes.

Services

Customer information, payment status and open AR files can also be synchronized. AR automation is a fantastic way to improve the financial performance and cash position of a business. And using a tool to automatically follow-up, collect, and reconcile invoices makes it easy to do. You’ll then want to integrate your cloud accounting software to your A/R automation tool so that overdue invoices and customers are synced across. BlackLine – optimize accounts receivable performance, create team capacity by removing manual processes, and gain critical decision intelligence to drive value.

#3. Increased data accuracy

Additionally, automated payment reminders and pre-authorized debits ensure clients adhere to the agreed payment schedule, significantly enhancing cash flow and allowing you to concentrate on business growth. The key benefit here is in the automated reminders part of the accounts receivable process. When your client sends an invoice to their customer, an automated email sequence goes out reminding them that the invoice is past due. Some AR automation tools do more, like reconcile the transaction with your accounting ledger tool along with a variety of other things to eliminate manual processes and better help accept payments. BILL accounts receivable software, you can get paid up to 2x faster, choose ACH and credit card to receive payment. Many automation tools can also convert estimates into invoices and deliver those invoices to customers automatically.

Choosing the Right Accounts Receivable Automation Software

AR software can automatically match invoices with relevant payment information and supporting documentation, saving valuable time and resources. This automation can reduce errors and improve the efficiency of the reconciliation process. Automating your accounts receivable (AR) process can save you valuable time and ensure that you collect the money owed to you promptly.

Esker’s AR solution suite is equipped with a customer and payment portal to facilitate customer relationships. Your customers can retrieve their invoices, and account statements with full autonomy and even pay online in 40+ countries worldwide. That’s why Esker Synergy acts behind the scenes to empower every user while improving the end-to-end CX. Here’s a simple 6-step process that you can use in your firm to deliver a secured what is net profit margin formula for calculation and examples service.

Monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Data privacy determines who has access to data, whereas data protection offers methods and rules to limit data access. Compliance requirements assist in guaranteeing that organizations comply with customer privacy requests and that they are accountable for taking precautions to secure private user data. People choose credit and debit cards for convenience, making them the most common payment methods, followed by checks and cash. This demonstrates that consumers continue to use various payment methods and companies that limit the payment types struggle to satisfy consumer expectations. Following questions help you evaluate the efficiency of your collection and credit activities along with identifying irregularities in the collection process. Ease the transition to AR automation by gradually phasing in its implementation, allowing your teams and customers to smoothly acclimate to the changes.