Anyone who runs a business of any size knows that, along with selling products and services, collecting payments is the most fundamental element of any successful organization. Without cash flow, no business can survive for long.
But for many companies, their accounts receivable (AR) processes are still completely manual.
Multiple steps and details are managed by hand, with data stitched together from disconnected systems and subject to multiple errors. With NetSuite, you can automate the entire AR process to not only eliminate manual, error-prone tasks, but also provide your customers the ability to manage their invoices and payments themselves.
What Is AR Automation?
AR automation is the concept of applying digital technologies to the otherwise manual tasks of sending invoices, processing payments and collecting past-due accounts. This automation replaces the time-consuming manual tasks of the typical AR process, streamlining a company’s financial transactions and decreasing the length of the credit-to-cash cycle.
AR automation also reduces the risk of billing errors, ensures that invoices are issued faster and simplifies the payment reconciliation process.
Businesses running on NetSuite already have robust functionality that automates parts of their accounts receivable process, enabling them to easily and quickly generate and send invoices, manage collections, automatically post order transactions to general and AR ledgers, and provide configurable dashboards, reports and KPIs for a real-time view of AR activity.
Fully Automating the Accounts Receivable Process
But what if you could automate and streamline your AR process even more? What if customers could manage and pay their invoices online, on their own?
What if you could quickly implement a pre-built payment processing solution with pre-negotiated rates and fees? And what if you could automate customer communications when invoices are past due?
NetSuite has three separate add-on modules that, when used together, provide a full AR automation solution that augments the existing NetSuite capabilities with self-service and automation features.
SuiteCommerce MyAccount – Self-Service Invoice and Payment Management
Achieving full AR automation starts with the ability for your customers to manage and pay their invoices themselves. SuiteCommerce MyAccount is NetSuite’s self-service customer portal that enables customers to view and pay their invoices without involvement of the accounting staff.
SuiteCommerce MyAccount provides many self-service features for both financial management and account management, such as:
- View and pay invoices
- Convert quotes to sales orders
- Submit returns and re-order items
- Review order history and support cases
- Manage accounts and subscriptions
SuiteCommerce MyAccount allows your customers to take control of their invoices and payments, reducing the costs of manual statement generation and improving customer satisfaction and retention.
NetSuite Pay – Streamlined Payment Processing
With a self-service portal in place, your customers need the ability to pay their invoices with debit cards, credit cards or ACH payments. With NetSuite Pay, businesses get an integrated payment processing solution that simplifies the management of financial transactions and enables you to sign up and start processing payments fast, both online and over the phone. NetSuite Pay provides key features such as:
- Support for multiple payment types, including debit and credit cards, international and ACH payments
- Native integration and highly competitive, pre-negotiated rates and fees with a preferred processing partner
- Easy, automated onboarding process via a secure online application form, accessed directly within NetSuite
- Automated reconciliation of daily transactions
- Detailed audit tracking and custom reporting tools with real-time data
NetSuite Pay enables businesses to quickly begin accepting payments, reduces manual tasks and human error, reduces overall interchange costs with level III purchasing card support, and includes in-house support for all costs associated with maintenance and support of its Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant integration.
Dunning Letters – Automated Collections
Collecting on late invoices is a necessary task that can be both unpleasant and time-consuming. With Dunning Letters, NetSuite provides a solution that automates the communication process with customers when accounts become past due.
Dunning Letters provides several collection automation features:
- System-generated payment notices and reminders, either by email or postal mail
- Configurable workflow to identify overdue accounts based on user-defined criteria
- Multi-language support
- Account inclusions and exclusions
- Results tracking with dashboard and reports
- All interactions recorded on the NetSuite customer record
Dunning Letters automates the collection process, helps reduce day sales outstanding (DSO), helps increase collection effectiveness by prioritizing communications based on amount or aging and improves the efficiency of the AR staff by eliminating manual tasks.
NetSuite’s Full AR Automation Solution
Instead of the AR staff manually sending invoices, processing payments and chasing down customers with past due amounts, NetSuite enables businesses to create a process that both empowers customers to manage their own invoices and payments, and reduces the burden on accounting departments by automating and streamlining the payment and collections process.
With the combined power of NetSuite’s standard AR features, NetSuite Pay, SuiteCommerce MyAccount and Dunning Letters, your business can improve cash flow, reduce DSO, increase the efficiency of the accounting staff and increase customer satisfaction through self-service.
Need Help?
Gross Mendelsohn’s Technology Solutions Group can help you improve your AR processes with NetSuite. Contact us here or call 410.685.5512 for help.
