As your business grows and scales, managing accounts receivable can be a daunting task. With invoice volumes and payment processing requirements increasing, your manual workflows will bottleneck. These inefficiencies in your AR processes will ultimately impact cash flow. To streamline your invoicing and payment collection processes, accounts receivable automation is key. In this article, we’ll explore some best practices for accounts receivable automation.
In this article
Streamline Invoicing
Paper-based invoices take time to generate, can get misplaced and are time-consuming to track. With automation, you can streamline your invoicing process from creation of invoices to delivery and following up on unpaid invoices. By automating these tasks, you can reduce the time and manual effort required to manage invoicing, minimize errors and ensure timely payment collection.
Make Payments Easy for Customers
Making sure your customers have a smooth payment experience is essential in optimizing your invoice-to-cash lifecycle. Giving customers a range of payment options native to their region will make it easier and more convenient for them to pay you. To optimize your AR processes, offer electronic payment methods, which allow you to accept ACH payments or receive payments through credit cards and eChecks. By enabling electronic payments, you can streamline collections, reduce processing times and minimize payment delays, all while improving the overall customer experience with your brand.
Leverage Automation for Payment Reminders
Late payments can cause significant disruptions to your cash flow. On the other hand, sending payment reminders manually can be time-consuming and tedious. Automated reminders ensure overdue payments are followed-up without the need for manual intervention. This can help improve collection rates and reduce the risk of delinquent accounts.
Implement Credit Risk Management
Credit risk management is the process of assessing the creditworthiness of customers and ensuring they are able to pay their invoices on time. Automation can help streamline this process by providing real-time credit assessments and monitoring customer payment histories. By implementing credit risk management, you can reduce the risk of bad debt and improve your overall financial stability.
Integrate with Your Accounting System
Running disjointed systems can result in inconsistencies in your data. To interpret the data across silos, more time and manual effort will be required from your AR team. By seamlessly integrating your accounts receivable automation platform with your accounting system, you can simplify financial reporting, reduce errors and improve overall efficiency. Automating the transfer of data between systems, can help minimize manual data entry, eliminate duplicate entries and ensure accurate financial reporting.
Final Word
Accounts receivable automation offers significant benefits for businesses of all sizes. By implementing best practices such as streamlining invoicing and offering convenient payment methods to your customers, you can improve cash flow, increase efficiency and enhance customer satisfaction. Cadency, the new AR automation platform by Datasoft may be the solution you are looking for. To learn more about how Cadency can help streamline your accounts receivable, book a demo.
