Paying your bills shouldn’t be a drain on company time and resources.
But paying suppliers remains the most labor-intensive and time-consuming finance function in the eyes of CFOs and other execs surveyed by the Institute of Finance and Management (IOFM).
Whether it’s onboarding and registering suppliers, making payments, or reconciling transactions, AP staff are bogged down with manual tasks that take them away from the things they were hired to do.
The operational disruption caused by the shift to remote working is only making things worse. It’s much harder to chase down the information to approve payments these days – to say nothing of the difficulty of paying suppliers and individuals with paper checks when AP staff work from home.
That’s why almost one-quarter of AP pros are working longer these days, according to IOFM. And why it costs almost $8 for mid-market businesses surveyed by Deloitte to make a single payment.
The root of the problem is the hodgepodge of point solutions and closed-loop networks that most AP departments use to pay suppliers. Each of these systems comes with its own logins and passwords, user authentications, file formats, and proprietary integrations.
As a result, friction and silos abound.
Piecemeal AP automation and supplier payment solutions won’t solve these challenges.
That’s why more AP departments are embedding payment solutions into their legacy software and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Embedded payment solutions provide a single platform for paying suppliers and individuals from directly within their legacy software or ERP.
Leading embedded payment solutions integrate with dozens of the top ERP applications.
Embedded payment solutions redefine the way that AP works.
Make payments of any type (e.g., ACH, Real-Time Payment, virtual card, Mastercard Send), using any payment rail, and from any originating bank account, from directly within the familiar screens of any legacy software or ERP application.
Receive automated alerts on invoices ready to be paid. And sort approved invoices by their due date to get instant visibility into upcoming payments.
Make payments in real-time or schedule payments for later. Use graphical dashboards to see where all approved invoices stand in the payments process. And leverage intuitive query tools to drill down in payment history and corporate spending trends.
Mitigate the risk of payment fraud with bank-grade security built into the embedded payments platform as well as complete audit logging and tools for validating the identity of payees. Combine the security provided by an embedded payment solution with the access controls and reporting in your legacy software or ERP for greater peace of mind.
Make it easy for suppliers and individuals to migrate to ACH, virtual cards or other electronic payment methods with self-service mobile onboarding. Suppliers and individuals can effortlessly validate their identity, provide contact information and banking details, upload any necessary documents, and choose how they want to get paid.
Eliminate time wasted keying data, shuffling paper, and chasing down information by automatically generating and sending rich remittance details for payees and reconciling payment data in real-time, without human operator intervention.
Enable suppliers to get paid early without impacting the cash on your balance sheet – or creating more work – through supply chain financing.
Embedded payment solutions are a tectonic shift for a finance function consumed by manual tasks.
Traditional approaches to AP automation will always result in handoffs that cause friction and data and payment silos. Only by embedding payments into legacy software and ERP applications can AP leaders address their big pain points and improve efficiency, reduce complexity, and mitigate risk.
Discover how your AP departments take a smarter way to pay suppliers & individuals.
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