Trade receivables remain a key issue for companies. On average, they represent 40%1 of a company’s total assets. However, despite the stakes involved, managing debt collection is often a source of stress and time wasted on formalities that are still not fully automated.
Optimize your expenses with receivables automation
All business sectors can face difficulties in implementing effective debt collection management, but the housing, insurance, leasing, energy and telecoms sectors are particularly sensitive to this issue.
Aware of these difficulties, CentralPay has developed a payment solution dedicated to invoice collection that unifies and automates the payment process, from invoice issue to collection.
Collection and the housing sector
In the housing sector, and especially as landlords, monitoring rent and other charges requires a huge amount of time and resources (human, material, financial). Numerous steps follow one another : listing of charges due, monitoring of payments, management of reminders and customer communication, collection and financial reconciliation, etc.
To best manage ” bad payers ” in all its forms, condominium associations, owners and landlords have set up collection processes that are often manual and tedious, thus complicating their organization : writing and sending out paper reminders, following up on these reminders, checking the status of payments, and so on.
In addition, payment methods are generally limited (limited number of payment methods accepted, limited payment methods (time-consuming or non-existent staggered payments), lack of automation in the event of failure, adding difficulty to the debt collection process. Companies offering greater flexibility and automation significantly shorten their payment times and detect bad payers more quickly.
The challenge of the collection process for specialist companies, insurance companies and B2C merchants
For companies issuing a large number of invoices, the problem is much the same : reduce processing costs and the human resources allocated to invoice payment. Every company that generates invoices is faced with the question of how to optimize its payment management.
A company with a high DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) will see its cash flow hit hard. It is therefore essential to enable them to reduce average customer payment times as much as possible.
However, customer relationship management for debt collection is costly and time-consuming. Few companies have actually made the transition to digital payment, and most steps in the debt collection process are still handled manually:
- Customer relationship management for invoice payment
- Management of payment status and follow-up linked to invoice collection
- Managing failures and alternative recovery scenarios
- Reconciliation of banking operations in ERP or quotation, invoicing and cash management tools
This complicates the management of payments, all the more so as the main means of payment accepted are cheques and transfers, which are complicated to process and pose certain difficulties in bank reconciliations (incoming transfer not referenced). Credit card payments are rarely offered, even though more and more companies are in favor of using them for low- and medium-volume payments.
In addition, the diversification of sales channels (online from a form, cheques received by post, payments by remote transfers), adds a difficulty to the bank reconciliation stage.
CentralPay solutions
CentralPay’s mission is to provide you with a complete payment system that enables you to automate the customer relationship linked to invoice payment, to limit the constraints associated with collection, and to make it easier for your customers to pay. Digitizing invoice processing cuts costs by 25-50% compared with manual processing. Our Push&Pay solution digitizes your claims without dehumanizing them, allowing you to focus your time and income on developing your business.
Push&Pay allows you to :
- Associate payment links with your invoices, and send them by email and SMS : digitalize your payment requests and send them to your customers by email and SMS with an optimized delivery rate.
- Send mass payment requests using an import file : you can send numerous payment requests easily by importing the spreadsheet of your invoices to be paid.
- Give your customers the option of paying as they wish : by card, bank transfer, direct debit, in instalments or with several cards.
- Optimize and automate your customer communications linked to payment : you edit email and SMS templates in advance, then program sending and reminder scenarios.
CentralPay facilitates your accounting reconciliation: each payment request incorporates a unique reference that you define, and all your customer settlements come up in the same interface, regardless of the payment medium.
Payment requests can be sent via our online portal, or integrated directly into your ERP or management tool. This integration allows you to take your payment management automation to the next level. CentralPay informs your ERP directly when an invoice has been paid. Whichever model you use, you benefit from comprehensive accounting exports and monthly financial reports. All your payments are now managed in real time.
Would you like to find out more about CentralPay’s expertise ? Contact our teams.
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Source :
http://www.assurance-credit-entreprise.fr/glossary/gestion-du-poste-clients/
