Reduce late payments to your business
Late payments can be challenging for any business, so what can you do to reduce them?
Late payments are a widespread problem for businesses of all sizes. Failure to pay suppliers on time negatively influences partnerships, resulting in product delivery disruptions and financial losses. So, what strategies can you use to combat the issue? Can automated task management software reduce late payments to your business?
Manual invoicing and chasing up processes are time consuming and prone to mistakes. Automation speeds up the process and assures compliance with policies, and decreases the likelihood of errors.
Here we'll discuss how automated task management software can help reduce late payments to your business.
Late payments - to be avoided at all costs
A large number of businesses pay their invoices late. Suppliers expect that firms will have the resources and organisational processes to pay invoices on time, and it's an issue that no one wants to be associated with since it implies a loss of earnings. So, how does it all come about?
No matter how hardworking and well trained they are, people make mistakes. If you're manually producing invoices, there may be a process on the other side where the incorrect purchase order is input, a failure to tally up invoices with purchases or where the other side is simply ignoring the invoices.
This means unpredictable results while performing manual invoice processing. It could also result in employees spending a lot of time on the process, but payments still being late or left unpaid.
Automated invoice processing through automated task management software allows businesses to gain greater control over their money. While the ultimate goal is to avoid late or missed payments, invoice automation also provides the finance team and business leaders with critical information at their fingertips. The business can use updated financial data to offer early payment terms to customers who have paid promptly in the past. As well as providing vital cash flow updates in real-time, this information can be used to make challenging decisions about financial strategy based on the company's current financial position.
Late payments - the knock on effect
The ramifications of late payments for a business that falls behind on its payment obligations are obvious, as they are for you as the business not being paid. While you can add late payment fees and withdraw any early payment incentives or put an end to the partnerships, it all adds up to extra time and stress for you - and can affect your cash flow.
The deployment of automated task management solutions can make a significant difference. Routine tasks are completed automatically to provide the highest speed and accuracy. The invoicing team now has more time to become strategic partners with management, giving critical financial updates that help fuel decisions to maintain the company's financial stability and reputation with suppliers. Automatic invoice processing is becoming increasingly popular among businesses as they want to avoid being paid late.
The cost
Late payments may be more detrimental than most people realise. Paying bills late or not at all negatively influences a company's overall operations, including its short term cash flow stability and long term bottom line outcomes. With the variety of automation options available today, businesses no longer have to suffer the consequences of late payments from other businesses. On the other hand, companies do not have to worry about missing payments or being late as a result of manual processes falling behind. Automated task management software ultimately helps businesses cut expenses, improve efficiency, and increase profit margins.
Most organisations who deploy task management automation software quickly realise that it pays for itself, usually within a year or two. Streamlined processes increase efficiency by reducing time spent on routine procedures such as invoice creation and reminders. Through cloud based invoicing solutions, the team may collaborate remotely to identify bottlenecks and decrease or eliminate delays in verification and approval processes. Everyone can review the most recent financial data to determine invoicing and payment habits that could result in a financial loss. The finance team can devote their time and abilities to more valuable tasks due to the intelligent use of automated systems.
The advantages and how automated task management software can help reduce late payments to your business
There may be questions about the return on investment of task management automation, and the adoption of a new method of processing invoices. But, the deployment of invoice automation helps businesses to reduce expenses and enhance working capital, and it enables the invoicing team to focus on more strategic activities.
Here are a few of the benefits of automating invoice processing:
- Invoice automation, which is cost effective and straightforward to understand, helps businesses save money while also achieving a meaningful return on their investment.
- Streamlines processes and makes critical financial data readily available to everyone at all times and from any location, enabling real time collaboration.
- Financial reporting is simplified.
- Manual invoice approvals can take days to process and chase up, resulting in late payments. Automated invoice approvals reduce the time, expense, and stress associated with manual invoice approvals.
- Late payments can hurt a business' reputation, production, and can cause vendor relationships to become strained. By eliminating the errors that might occur during manual processes, automated task management software helps to ensure that businesses remain on the right financial track at all times.
For more information on automated task management software, and reducing late payments to your business, why not have a chat with one of our team.