Kenny Tripura April 30, 2021 Revenue generation is the primary goal of every organization and B2B payments and payments made by clients are the major streams of revenue. At the higher level, thousands of payments are received and made and conventional payment methods fail to keep up with the pace. The use of advanced technologies and tools has increased the speed and efficiency of operations. Financial service providers and payment methods have also been impacted due to these automation trends.
Payment automation solutions have revolutionized businesses across the globe. Does payment automation require heavy investment or can smart solutions work with the current payment infrastructure? What are the benefits of payment automation and how to automate the payments? All of these questions concern SMEs across the different markets. In this article, we are going to explore major possible payment automation solutions including APIs and other tools.
Why Payment Automation is Critical for Business?
For starters, automated payment methods reduce the cost of invoicing to 50% and offer faster processing. Paper invoices with conventional bank checks are more expensive. Digitalizing the complete payment system may not work for every market. So, the best way to reduce invoicing costs is to introduce solutions for printing and mailing checks. These APIs combine the power of digital tools and conventional checks. Businesses can write, print, and mail checks without any 3rd party service.
Manual processing of transactions can keep your financial staff occupied for weeks. Reconciling financial statistics, collecting paper checks and writing checks can take hours to complete a few invoices. This approach fails to meet the ever-increasing financial needs of institutions. Manual processing is time-taking, prone to errors, slow, and tedious. Payment automation allows businesses to overcome all of these challenges with the least investment and effort.
How to Automate Payments for Businesses?
Automated payment methods require a little effort at the start, but things will be smoother and faster after the setup. This one-time investment in payment automation will offer ROI that is worth it. Here are some popular ways to automate payments for any business.
1. Switch to e-Invoicing
Receiving the invoices is the first step towards the financial transactions. If the manual invoicing models are followed, automation may be a challenge. Invoicing is the major part of the whole financial workflow. Digitalizing the invoices is a challenging phase because there is no universal standard of guidelines for capturing invoices. Collaborate with your vendors and clients for the swift shift towards electronic invoices. Automation solutions can easily process these electronic invoices that reduce the paper cost and promote the environment-friendly commitment of the business.
2. Payment Approval Automation
Approval of the payments is a significant phase in the workflow. The further transaction cannot proceed until the invoice has been approved by the relevant authority. Payment approval and verification not only need to be automated but secure too. Unauthorized approval of payments can cost a fortune to the business and will create various loopholes in the process.
The approval automation will route every invoice to the relevant department so the seamless flow is maintained in the entire business. Availability of clear data and access to the relevant invoices help them to process these requests swiftly and improve financial performance.
3. Integrating Checks API
Automation is not just about digital solutions but conventional methods can also perform better with process optimization. Checks APIs allow the managers to write print and mail checks online. Instead of relying on banking institutions, businesses can generate their own personalized checks. These checks are legit and legal on all levels. Check APIs can be integrated with the existing infrastructure and businesses will be able to release their own checks with branding.
Even in today’s modern world, checks hold an important place in the financial sector. Businesses and organizations rely on checks more than any other payment method. APIs automate the check writing and mailing process and speed up the process.
4. Automatically Verify and Match
After writing and printing checks & invoices, the next step is mailing these checks to the right customers and businesses. When thousands of checks need to be sent, approving and verifying each address can be hectic. The manual verification process is not only slow but lacks authenticity too. Change of address or invalid mailing address will result in an undelivered check. These issues can lead to more serious problems that damage the reputation of the business.
Clients and your vendors expect to get paid on time and if checks don’t reach them on time, they are going to blame you. Automation solutions not only streamline the writing and printing process but also take care of validating mailing addresses. The automated address validation process fetches the address databases from different official resources. The entered mailing addresses are validated against the official databases. The verification and validation process of mailing addresses is fully computerized and digital.
5. Review Transaction Status
Reviewing and monitoring the payments is critical for balancing the accounts. Conventional checks are out of your reach once delivered. AI-based automation solutions monitor the payments so you can filter out the successful payments that have been received by the other parties. These statistics not only allow secure payment gateways but you also get useful insights and payments’ historical data. Analyzing these financial statements allow businesses to optimize the process.
Final Verdict
Payment automation gives visibility and transparency to the businesses so they have maximum control over finance and revenues. The scalability of the automated solutions saves time, money, and workforce. Repetitive tasks take time and automating these tasks is the key to business growth. Late payments can hurt your business so let’s streamline payments with automation and other smart solutions.
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