Boost Your Collection Potential With Top-rated Accounts Receivable Software
You all know the risks and disadvantages in collecting or recovering the amount from your customers which are past due. What if I tell you that you can easily streamline your accounts receivable management system by recovering the past due payments from your customers and increasing the collection potential of your business?
Difficulties in Accounts Receivable Collections
Here are some of the known and unknown difficulties that a business owner faces while managing, maintaining, and collecting the payment from their customer.
Some of the major known difficulties that a business owner may face while managing accounts receivable include:
1. Late Payments:
No one can assure that they'll get paid soon after sending customers one or two invoice reminders. This may be feasible for a tiny business with a small customer base. But not for a company with a large number of customers.
Customers may take longer than expected to pay their invoices, causing cash flow problems for the company. If you're not getting paid even after sending an invoice reminder, your company may be experiencing cash flow problems and this could be a serious issue that needs to be addressed immediately.
2. Credit Risk:
No one can ensure that a customer would pay after receiving one or two invoice reminders for past-due payments, as previously indicated. There is a risk that a customer would refuse or fail to pay you the money owed to you.
This will disrupt the organization's cash flow, resulting in significant financial losses for the organization. If your invoice reminder is also ignored and refused, you should take this seriously before your company suffers a big financial loss.
3. Limited Resources:
Limited resources would serve for small enterprises to manage and maintain their accounts receivable process. However, for a growing business like yours, limited resources will be the first obstacle that stops customers from completing payments and reduces your company's income.
If you own a small business, you may have limited resources to spend on the accounts receivable process, which can make proper management and maintenance of your accounts receivable feasible. Otherwise, even if your customer is ready to pay, your limited resources will be unable to collect and record the payment, which must be rectified quickly.
4. Complex Invoicing:
The invoice, like the resources, plays an important role in getting paid and boosting income. Making it more difficult for your customer to understand and identify the invoice would undoubtedly reduce your organization's cash flow.
It can be challenging to maintain track of payments and guarantee that all invoices are paid on time if a company has complex invoicing systems or a large number of invoices to monitor. So, producing and delivering complicated invoices to customers would only result in more delayed unpaid invoice payments for your organization.
Some of the major unknown difficulties that a business owner may face while managing accounts receivable include:
1. Changes in customer behavior:
The majority of the time, business owners like you were completely oblivious to their customer's payment patterns. Payment behavior is defined as the rate at which the customer pays invoices in contrast to the agreed-upon period. If the customer continues to pay you late or never pays you, your organization's DSO will rise, resulting in less cash flow.
Changes in a customer's payment habit may go unnoticed by a business owner until it is too late to fix the problem. Even with tiny firms, determining your customer's payment habits might be tricky. Then analyze the expanding and increasing businesses, as well as their customers' payment status. This is a severe problem that many business owners are unaware of.
2. Unexpected expenses:
Another surprising issue in managing and handling your accounts receivable is an unexpected expense, which affects your revenue more.
A business owner may face unexpected expenses that make it more difficult to collect payments from customers.
3. Economic downturns:
An economic downturn is a situation in which your customers may confront increased unemployment, less economic activity, and decreased income and wealth. This could cause them to ignore and skip your invoice reminders, and you may not get paid as a result.
Economic downturns or other external events may have an impact on a company's capacity to collect customer payments. This is not only for your customers but also for businesses that lack accurate data and insights into their accounts receivable.
4. Fraud:
Fraudulent acts are becoming widespread and unpredictable. As a business owner, you must be vigilant in maintaining and managing your accounts receivable.
It is pointless to investigate once fraudulent activity has occurred. As a result, as a business owner, you must be aware of fraudulent activity before it is too late to save your company from financial damages.
Ways to Manage and Overcome Difficulties in Accounts Receivable Collection
There are a few strategies that you can use to manage and overcome the above-mentioned known and unknown difficulties in accounts receivable collections and boost your collection potential.
Here are the strategies for managing and maintaining accounts receivable collection difficulties
1. Connect with your customers in a clear and timely manner:
Keeping in touch with your customers on time will increase and boost your organization's cash flow by making your customers respond to your invoice reminders and pay the outstanding overdue payments on time. It is important not only to follow up regularly but also to generate the invoice without errors.
Invoices should clearly state when payment is due and the terms of your payment policy. If a customer is having trouble paying, contact them as quickly as possible to attempt to figure out a solution. This will enhance your company's cash flow and sales.
2. Implement billing and invoicing software:
Manual errors and delays are unavoidable as humans are error-prone easily. It is very much difficult to stop errors from happening, even in small enterprises. Then, think of a huge business with a large customer base! It’ll be difficult and impossible on the other side.
But automating your accounts receivable process will help you avoid human errors by generating and sending invoices automatically to your customers.
This can help you keep track of your outstanding invoices and help you in automatically send invoice reminders to your customers when payment is due. This will result in a significant decrease in your DSO and increase your revenue rapidly.
3. Provide several payment options:
Even after providing regular and clear invoice reminders to their customers, some business owners are still suffering. You may have encountered this problem as well. Do you realize why?
It is practically hard to recover payments from your customers without a proper payment method. Even you can't pay if you don't know where or how to pay for a service or product you've purchased.
Consider providing a range of payment methods to your customers, such as credit card payments, online payment portals, or the ability to set up automatic payments. Your customers will subsequently find it extremely easy to pay the pending due, and as a result, your organization's cash flow will improve.
4. Maintain continuous follow-up:
If you want to collect a past-due payment from a customer, you should try following up with them regularly. It is practically hard to recover or collect pending late payments from your customers without effective follow-up.
However, manually following up on a large customer base would not work and will waste your time. Instead, use accounts receivable software to automate your follow-ups.
Set up an automated process to follow up with customers who haven't paid their invoices in a long time. This includes sending invoice SMS and email reminders, as well as calling customers to remind them of their unpaid balance.
5. Consider providing Credits for on-time payment:
Customers are constantly looking for recognition or rewards for their endeavors. This is a frequent kind of anticipating recognition, which we all do from time to time.
Have you considered utilizing this to improve your accounts receivable process?
You may provide a credit score to customers who pay their invoices on time or early. This would encourage them to continue paying their invoices on or before the due date. If this occurs, your organization's DSO will be reduced by more than 15 days, increasing cash flow.
6. Be prepared to negotiate:
Problems and struggles will arise not just for the corporation, but also for the customers who have all purchased a product or service on credit. If you're a business owner who wants to collect past payments from customers but doesn't want to lose them, you should first understand their financial problems.
Consider arranging a new payment plan that works for both of you if a customer is experiencing true financial issues. In the event of a natural catastrophe in a customer's location, it would be extremely beneficial to them if you could negotiate and change the payment date.
Boosting Collection Potential with Accounts Receivable Automation Software
By simplifying and automating many of the procedures and steps involved, accounts receivable automation software can help to boost the collection potential of your accounts receivable process. Some significant methods for accomplishing this include:
1. Invoice generating and delivery automation:
Invoices may be prepared and dispatched automatically with accounts receivable automation software, ensuring that they are sent out in a timely and precise way. This can assist to lessen the chance of invoices being delayed or misplaced, which can stymie collection attempts.
2. Payment processing automation:
Accounts receivable automation software can also assist businesses to simplify payment processing by automatically recording and applying for payments as they come in. This can help in the reduction of mistakes and the allocation of payments to the proper invoices.
3. Follow-up and collection automation:
The software can assist with the automated dunning process, which allows you to plan automated follow-up and collections reminders, decreasing the need for manual follow-up and ensuring prompt receipt of payment.
4. Options for automated invoicing and payment:
Many accounts receivable automation software packages include the ability to issue invoices and accept payments virtually, such as via email or a secure internet portal. This makes it easy for customers to pay, which could also assist to raise funding levels.
5. Analytics and reports:
A good software package includes a variety of reports that may assist you in analyzing your accounts receivable data, identifying trends and patterns, and making wise decisions regarding your collection approach.
Accounts receivable automation software will assist to enhance productivity, eliminate errors, and ultimately raise the collection potential of your organization by automating many of the tasks involved in your accounts receivable process.
Maxyfi will do the same for your accounts receivable, decreasing your DSO and enhancing the collection potential of your organization. We can expect even more great discoveries and breakthroughs in the accounts receivable industry as the globe continues to evolve. Visit Maxyfi Blogs to discover more about Accounts Receivable Automation Software.