The Essential Elements of Effective Accounts Receivable Software for Your Business

Discover what your accounts receivable software solution needs to best serve your customers and business.

By Parag Patel, Co-Founder and COO of Invoiced 

Automating the accounts receivable process is quickly becoming the norm. Even before 2020 turned many companies into remote workforces, the trend was to turn manual A/R operations into automated versions, creating efficient processes that require less from the company while providing more.

Not all software solutions are built the same, though. Making informed decisions when selecting a platform can set you up for long-term success – or force you to go through the selection process all over again.

Here, we’ll discuss what features your A/R software should have and how they’ll effectively support your business.

Delivers invoices to multiple audiences

Sending regular invoices is the easy part. Delivering them to increasingly tiered and segmented customers comes with a level of complexity that is frequently the victim of human error.

Competitive marketplaces often require multiple pricing options to acquire and retain customers. There are often volume discounts or different tiers of service that need specific invoicing parameters, not to mention different tax rates. An effective A/R platform must be able to easily and efficiently support significant numbers of audience types.

It should be able to quickly set up different tiers or types and ensure that correct invoices are delivered on time. The invoicing software should require little maintenance and need to be addressed only when pricing changes are made.

Customer portals for easy account access 

Customers want to be able to access and service their account on their own time, from anywhere. They expect robust payment portals that provide everything they need to know about their account, from order history to payment due dates.

Your A/R software must be able to provide this. Payment portals require few resources to set up and remove a significant amount of the need for customer service. Making payments as easy as clicking a button, increasing your cash flow and decreasing your days sales outstanding (DSO) metric.

A good portal should include customer history, saved payment options and real-time data. Payments should reflect on accounts as soon as they are made. At the least, payment should be reflected as pending.

It should also easily interact with payment gateways. Integration should be simple and allow companies to accept multiple forms of payment. By integrating your A/R software with a payment gateway, your account reconciliation becomes more streamlined, which is why A/R software options like Invoiced work well with Cardknox.  

Robust reporting

It’s not enough to just automate invoicing, you need to actively track performance as well. An effective A/R software solution will do this for you, providing data and insights to maximize the value of A/R operations.

Being able to easily view DSO, A/R aging or sales data helps companies better respond to customers. If a customer is consistently late, payment plans may help. If a customer always pays on time, loyalty discounts could be appropriate.

Those decisions all come from the software’s reporting suite.

Bespoke options for specific needs

Company needs are going to vary and software solutions should understand this. They need to be flexible enough to handle a variety of requirements.

A good A/R platform is flexible enough to:

• Play well with most payment gateways
• Integrate with legacy and third-party platforms
• Be capable of handling complex billing options
• Offer versatile payment plans
• Track communications
• Easily automate, but be able to operate manually when needed
• Provide multi-channel reminder options
• Offer a payment portal that is tailored to customer needs
  

Why use Automated A/R Software 

With these key points in mind it should be easier to find an automated A/R software solution that best suits your accounting team’s needs. Just remember, it’s important to find a platform that’s flexible, easy to use, and has a customer-centric payment portal that can integrate with already existing gateway providers, like Cardknox. 

Making the decision to use automated A/R solutions, like Invoiced, offers an easy and efficient way to streamline your accounting operations, better serve your customers and ensure your cash flow remains consistent.