In an ideal world, a customer either pays money and buys your product or avails of your service and pays you for it. What happens when they don’t do that? What if you have to send multiple reminders and chase your customers to pay you back? What if you’re a victim of late payments, or worse, if your systems are outdated and you’re slogging away manually entering data?
In this blog, we’ll look at the challenges of manual accounting for AR, and then we’ll explore how automating the AR process can benefit your business.
Importance of Accounts Receivable Management
Accounts receivable management is the process of billing and collecting payments from customers for goods or services.
An efficient accounts receivable management process assists in maintaining a healthy cash flow to cover operating expenses and scale your business. Inadequate cash flow, on the other hand, can have serious consequences, such as slowed growth or even bankruptcy.
Top Benefits of AR Automation to Know
Many of the most common and significant benefits of accounts receivable management are listed below.
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Improved speed and efficiency.
Automation improves the AR team’s productivity, efficiency, and accuracy. Using digital templates, employees can generate more invoices in less time than it would take to generate them manually, and online delivery gets invoices into the hands of customers faster. Complex billing schemes, such as consumption-based billing, can also be calculated faster and more accurately.
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Reduction in human error.
Manual invoice generation is inefficient, time-consuming, and prone to errors such as omissions, transpositions, duplication, and erroneous. AR automation reduces errors through the use of integrated databases that automatically fill in customer data and product details, as well as automated matching that connects customer purchase orders to shipping details and invoices.
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Cost savings.
AR automation saves costs in a variety of ways. Increased productivity, can reduce the amount of time required by staff to simply process data, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities such as finding and resolving accounts. It may even be possible consequently reduce resource requirements,
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Improved cash flow forecasting.
AR automation helps a company get the maximum amount of cash collected in the fastest amount of time, increasing cash flow. Furthermore, because of more reliable and consistent collection patterns, which can be monitored using enhanced reporting with real-time data, it improves a company’s ability to forecast future cash flows.
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Enhanced dashboards.
Depending on the user’s role, AR dashboards provide easily digestible data that can be customized to assist with day-to-day tasks or high-level decision-making. Customer-specific information, such as real-time aging reports and customer master files, is available at both the summary and detailed levels. Dashboards display key performance indicators such as AR turnover and DSO, as well as activity in the AR department such as processing output, payment collection, and error rate.
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Advanced security and compliance.
Automation aids in the security of the AR process, which is especially important when it comes to sensitive customer data and payment processing. Automated AR eliminates manual processes that are particularly vulnerable to security breaches and fraud, such as email and paper files. Furthermore, with many AR teams migrating to a distributed work environment, the ability to access and store AR and payment records in a secure environment has become increasingly important.
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Faster payments.
Reduced DSO results in increased cash flow and fewer write-offs for bad debt. AR automation assists organizations in meeting these goals by allowing them to send a higher volume of invoices to customers in a more accurate and timely manner. AR automation systems also enable businesses to personalize invoices with information that helps customers validate their purchases.
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Better customer service.
From invoicing to collections, the AR process has direct contact with the customer, so it must be timely, accurate, and professional. It’s also critical to make the payment process as simple as possible, reducing processing costs for customers’ accounts payable teams. AR automation assists organizations in meeting all of these goals, including increasing customer trust and reducing uncomfortable disputes.
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Reduced cost of payment processing.
According to studies, AR automation can significantly reduce the costs of processing invoices and collecting payments. Various studies cite various statistics, but they all point to significant cost savings when using an automated AR system rather than performing AR manually.
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Access to real-time data.
The tangle of spreadsheets, multiple subsystems, and the possibility of conflicting data that comes with manual AR are eliminated by automation. An automated AR system provides real-time visibility into AR data, including open invoices, closed invoices, aging and payment history, and pending data, such as unbilled orders.
Stop wasting time and resources, and let outsourcing services providers or BPO companies manage your accounts receivable.
FAQs
Why is effective management of accounts receivable important?
Accounts receivable management has a significant impact on your company’s revenue and cash flow. When done correctly, you will receive timely payments, satisfied clients, and high liquidity for your company.
What are the most important goals of AR?
One of the most important accounts receivable goals is to maintain a high level of data hygiene.
What is the primary objective of AR management?
The primary goal of Accounts Receivable management is to reduce Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and processing costs while maintaining positive customer relations. Accounts receivable are frequently the largest current asset on a balance sheet.
Hopefully, this guide will be useful in assisting you in improving this critical aspect of your business.