If you’re finding it too time-consuming to manually mail out invoices and match payments to invoices, or if you’re finding your DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) keeps increasing while the time and resources required for your accounts receivable (AR) process are constrained, you need to make a change. We’ve put together these seven accounts receivable best practices that can help you collect payments faster while saving time and resources and improving the customer experience. 1. Automate your AR process If you find your AR team spend too much time sending and tracking invoices, dealing with customers’ inquiries, or chasing customers to collect payments, you need to automate. A good AR automation solution can drive efficiencies in your AR process, reduce human error, and also reduce your DSO. Through effective invoice presentment and management, integration with your ERP system, and by providing an easy-to-navigate payment portal dedicated to your customers, the right AR automation platform will improve the customer experience. 2. Speed up your AR process with discounts and shorter payment terms Another tip to help improve your payment process is to offer discounts or to shorten your payment terms. Terms such as 2/10, N30 act as a little incentive to help Read More

Change can be a frightening thing. Doing things the way they’ve always been done often seems like the easier option. However, just because something has always been done in a certain way doesn’t mean it’s always been done in the right way. Take accounts receivable and invoice presentment. Manually sending out hard-copy paper invoices to your customers is the way it’s always been done, but is it the way it should be done? Do you know what invoice processing is costing you? According to a recent report from PYMNTS.com, the average cost to process a single invoice is between $16.00 to $22.00. Where are these costs coming from? You might be surprised to find out. There are unexpected fees and hidden costs to every invoice. Here are four ways manual invoice processing is costing your business money: 1. Time Intensive Labor Instead of your team spending their time completing challenging and fulfilling tasks that will further grow your business, they’re manually sending invoices and inputting data. According to a report from Ardent Partners, the average time for a business to manually process an invoice was close to 11 days. On the other hand, this number was around 3 days for Read More

We talk to CFOs every day and it’s apparent that there is a dramatic shift happening in Accounts Receivables (AR) and the dynamics between suppliers and their customers as they interact throughout the Order to Cash (OTC) process. Specifically, we have entered the era of Customer-Centric AR. You may be wondering, what is Customer-Centric AR? In the past, only your biggest customers could demand special treatment from you, ranging from special terms, to customized invoicing, to taking payments however they wanted to send them. Regardless of the work effort required, you would gladly accommodate the requests as they were, after all, big customers.  For the rest and majority of your customers, this effort was not scalable. Rather, the rest of your customers had no choice but to submit to your invoicing and payment practices. In other words, your AR process was pretty “Supplier Centric”. Now, even your smallest customers not only demand special treatment, they also expect it. They want to interact with you online, on their terms, and in a simple and secure way. They want to self-serve to view and pay invoices at their convenience, and collaborate with you only when they need help. That’s Customer-Centric AR. Sounding Read More

What do social media and accounts receivables have in common? Up until now, you’d be right in thinking the answer was ‘not a whole lot’. Which was a problem. The principles of social media - the real-time creating and sharing of information and online collaboration – is exactly what modern AR departments need to succeed. “By and large, the AR process is very inwardly focused, which sounds kind of strange because it’s about collecting money from customers,” our CEO, Craig O’Neill, explains in the recently released Accounts Receivable Automation Report from PYMNTS.com and American Express. “It really doesn’t do a good job of communicating with, collaborating with and solving problems for customers.” In the report’s feature story, Craig explains how VersaPay’s AR platform, ARC®, uses a social media framework to increase transparency and foster greater collaboration between buyers and sellers. Imagine a world where your interaction with customers no longer requires you to monitor email messages, add notes in a collections database and tracking customer profiles in your ERP. The report also details the News and Trends in AR Automation as well as takes a deep dive into accounts receivable frictions and how technologies like AI can automate and accelerate Read More

As 2019 creeps closer to the end, it’s important to both agree on your business priorities for the coming year as well as understand the resources and time available in this calendar year to enact timely change. We’ve all been through the cycle enough times to know that waiting until the new year to make the changes required to succeed in the new year is far too late. The time to act is now. But what action is required? Earlier this month, Deloitte released The 2020 Commercial Real Estate Outlook in which they surveyed 750 CRE executives—owners/operators, developers, brokers, and investors—in 10 countries. The outcome of the survey is a detailed report outlining the ​challenges, opportunities, and the potential for transformation for CRE in 2020. Based on this report, the top priority for Commercial Real Estate organizations in 2020 is the tenant experience. “Most respondents rated tenant experience as a top priority. Yet, for a majority, digital tenant experience is not a core competency.” – Deloitte 2020 commercial real estate outlook PwC and Urban Land Institute recently released a similar report detailing the emerging trends in real estate in the United States and Canada for 2020. “A major part of Read More

Before: Too Many Systems … Too Much Wasted Time Meet Julie. Julie is a credit manager in the Chicago office of a large wholesale distribution company. Each month, she and her team of five collectors oversee thousands of customer accounts and over $4.5 million in past due payments. Every Monday at 9:00 a.m., Julie receives a Microsoft Excel report that contains key information on all of her accounts. The massive file contains more than 40 columns, and thousands of rows. The spreadsheet is Julie’s primary way to track aging invoices, payments, and disputes. But the data gets old – fast. As soon as someone runs the report, the data is stale...but Julie must rely on it for the entire week. Julie does the best that she can with the information she has on hand. On Monday morning, she carves up the Excel report into actionable items for the team. She performs the tedious task of importing data from Excel into Crystal Reports. Although some of the data that Julie moves into Crystal Reports is already old, she doesn’t have a better way to show collectors where they need to focus their follow-up efforts. Julie spends her afternoons acting on the Read More

An AR automation tool can help you get paid faster while you reduce the burden on your in-house team. Ultimately, this helps you improve your cash flow and protect your margins. The next section of this guide will show you exactly how you can achieve these results (quickly and with minimal risk). Implementing an AR automation tool doesn’t need to take months or years. But to achieve rapid results, you need a plan. There are five steps you need to undertake to improve your finance efficiencies, deliver a better customer experience and bring in more money – faster. Here is the final step. - Missed Step 4? Click here to catch up. - 5. Consolidate your AR tools Your AR tools don’t just provide information about invoices and collections. They contain critical financial data that gives all of your stakeholders a clear view of your operations. Centralizing your disparate AR tools into one system allows you, your team and the rest of the C-suite to quickly find the numbers that they need when they need them. A central tool is particularly useful if you have multiple AR teams that are spread across the country. Your finance employees, sales reps, and Read More

Digital transformation doesn’t need to be lengthy. With the right plan, and the right solution, you can achieve quick results with minimal risks. There are five steps you need to undertake to improve your finance efficiencies, deliver a better customer experience and bring in more money – faster. Here’s step 4. - Missed Step 3? Click here to catch up. - 4. Go beyond a payment portal As the B2B space becomes more digital, you might have considered offering customers a portal where they can pay invoices and check their accounts online. Perhaps you have even tried such a portal. Payment portals are a great step if you want to delight your customers while getting your money in faster. However, an online payment portal won’t help you achieve these goals if your customers don’t use it. Distributors tell us that many online portals offer a poor experience and make customers jump through hoops just  to submit a payment. For example, customers may need to navigate to a link that is buried deep within your website. Or your customers might receive unbranded invoices that make them think of spam. Another issue with payment portals is that most are built for B2C Read More

Are you struggling at months end to reconcile all of your cash receipts? When it comes to the cash application process, the advent of electronic payments has actually made the process more difficult. With ACH, wire and credit card remittances coming from many sources - including mail, email, web portals, and EDI - the process has become labor-intensive and complicated. But there is a solution. Intelligent automation technology can reduce the number of manual tasks your team manages on a daily basis by automatically matching cash receipts to invoices. Here are four ways that an automation software solution can help improve your match rates, reduce errors, and streamline the cash application process. 1. Email Remittance  For customers that send payment remittance via email – be it in the body of the email message or as a PDF, Excel, CSV, or EDI attachment - you can use robotic process automation (RPA) to download the data in to a cash application solution automatically. As soon as those files land in the remittance inbox. Once the information has been downloaded, RPAs can match the receipts to open invoices. 2. AP Portal  Walmart, Amazon and many large buyers use their own AP portals. This Read More

Transforming your finance processes doesn’t need to take months or years. But to achieve rapid results, you need a plan. There are five steps you need to undertake to improve your finance efficiencies, deliver a better customer experience and bring in more money – faster. Here’s step 3. - Missed Step 2? Click here to catch up. - 3. Define your success metrics AR automation can reduce your DSO by 5-25 days. Before you implement an AR automation tool, be clear on your expected ROI. Here are some areas where you should look to track the success of your AR automation solution once it has been implemented: Does it reduce the workload of your accounting team? Is the communication generated through the platform an improvement over email and phone? Does the integration with your ERP save your team time? Does the availability of this platform improve customer relationships? Are customers adopting the new platform? Do customers enjoy using the new platform? Does it increase the transparency of your AR? Does it reduce the number of printed documents required? Does it lower your DSO? Is it cash application easier and more accurate? Are fewer invoices going into collections? Let’s look at Read More

Whether your distribution company is growing, has stalled or is in decline, each scenario has its challenges. Whether enabling scale, securing profit margins and cash flow, or guarding against new competitive business models, you may not have the time or resources to devote to a lengthy finance transformation project. Transforming your finance processes doesn’t need to take months or years. But to achieve rapid results, you need a plan. There are five steps you need to undertake to improve your finance efficiencies, deliver a better customer experience and bring in more money – faster. Here’s step 2. - Missed Step 1? Click here to catch up. - 2. Assemble the right team According to a study by CIO.com , the lack of a strong team can cause your digital transformation project to fail. The top team-related challenges include leadership that isn’t committed, resistance to change, and a lack of talent to carry out the transformation. To ensure that your financial transformation succeeds, you must dedicate a person to change management – a champion. If your company is large, you may have a Change Manager. If your company is smaller, you can assign a business analyst to this role. Choose someone Read More