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The Evolution of Getting Paid: Understanding AR Automation for Portals

Daniel Asraf
January 20, 2025
10 min read

Remember when getting paid was simple? A customer received an invoice, wrote a check, and mailed it back. Then came electronic payments, which promised even greater simplicity. But something unexpected happened along the way: the rise of payment portals. What started as a few enterprise customers requiring portal submissions has become the standard way of doing business, with each customer having their own platform, their own rules, and their own way of processing payments.

This shift has fundamentally changed what accounts receivable automation means. Traditional AR automation focused on digitizing invoices and tracking payments. But today’s reality demands something more sophisticated. When we talk about AR automation for portals, we’re talking about transforming how businesses handle the entire payment collection process in a world where each customer operates in their own digital ecosystem.

What is AR Automation For Portals?

At its core, accounts receivable automation is about removing manual work from the process of getting paid. It’s the technology that takes repetitive tasks – creating invoices, sending them to customers, tracking their status, and reconciling payments – and makes them happen automatically. But portal-specific AR automation goes further. It’s about creating a bridge between your accounting system and the dozens of different platforms your customers use to pay you.

Think of it like having a universal translator for payments. Instead of your team learning to speak 30 different languages (or in this case, use 30 different portals), automation acts as your interpreter, ensuring every invoice speaks the right language for each customer’s portal.

But why has this become so crucial now? The landscape of B2B payments has shifted dramatically. According to Gartner, over half of global mid-market and large enterprises will use payment portals by next year. More significantly, regulations in over 55 countries are now mandating electronic invoicing platforms. This isn’t just a trend – it’s a fundamental change in how businesses exchange money.

The challenges this creates go beyond mere inconvenience. When AR teams spend their mornings logging into dozens of portals, they’re not just wasting time – they’re losing visibility into their company’s cash flow. Every portal becomes a black box where invoices go in, and payments hopefully come out, but the status in between remains frustratingly opaque.

Real AR Automation for Portals Needs to Solve Three Challenges

First, it needs to eliminate the manual work of portal management. This isn’t just about logging in – it’s about understanding and adapting to each portal’s unique requirements automatically. When an invoice needs to be submitted, the system should know exactly how to format it, where to send it, and how to track its status.

Second, it needs to provide complete visibility across all portals in real time. Finance leaders shouldn’t have to wait for their teams to check multiple systems to understand their cash position. They should have instant access to the status of every invoice, regardless of which portal it’s in.

Third, it needs to learn and adapt. Each customer’s portal has its own quirks and requirements. True automation doesn’t just follow static rules – it learns from experience, adapting to changes in portal requirements and becoming more efficient over time.

The Human Cost of Portal Proliferation

This evolution in payment processes has created an interesting paradox. The very systems designed to make payments more efficient – customer payment portals – have actually made the process more complex for the receiving side. AR professionals who once specialized in financial operations now spend their days as portal managers, data entry specialists, and digital detectives tracking down payment statuses.

The costs go beyond the obvious time spent logging into systems. When skilled finance professionals spend their days copying and pasting data between portals, something important is lost. Strategic thinking gives way to tactical firefighting. Customer relationships suffer as teams focus more on portal requirements than on building valuable partnerships. And perhaps most critically, businesses lose the ability to make confident decisions about their financial future because their payment data is scattered across dozens of systems.

The Missing Ingredient in AR Automation for Portals: Intelligence

This is where true AR automation for portals needs to step in – not just as a band-aid solution for manual tasks, but as a fundamental rethinking of how businesses manage their receivables in a portal-dominated world. The goal isn’t just to make portal management easier; it’s to make it disappear entirely.

Consider what happens when a customer adopts a new payment portal. Traditionally, this kicks off weeks of work: learning the new system, understanding its requirements, training team members, setting up new processes. But with proper automation, this should be as simple as connecting to any other digital service. The system should learn the portal’s requirements automatically, adapt your existing invoice formats to match, and seamlessly integrate the new platform into your existing workflows.

What makes modern AR automation for portals different from earlier attempts at automation is intelligence. Traditional automation follows rules – if this, then that. But portal automation needs to learn and adapt. It needs to understand that when Client A rejects an invoice, it might be for a completely different reason than when Client B rejects one, even if they’re using the same portal.

This intelligence extends to payment prediction as well. When the system has processed thousands of invoices across hundreds of portals, it starts to recognize patterns. It can predict not just when a payment is likely to arrive, but identify potential issues before they cause delays. This isn’t just automation – it’s augmentation of your AR team’s capabilities.

The First 30 Days

The most common question businesses ask when considering AR automation for portals is: “How disruptive will this transition be?” The answer might be surprising. Unlike traditional automation projects that can take months to implement, modern AR automation for portals can begin showing results almost immediately.

At Monto, for example, we exist as a simple ‘plug and play’ solution. With pre-existing connections to over 300 portals, all our customers have to do is provide us with their existing logins. From there, we connect Monto to each portal, and our platform starts learning the way each portal works, the requirements it has, the formats it prefers, and so on.

Think about it this way: your team has already done the hard work of learning how each portal operates. They know that Client A needs invoices in a specific PDF format while Client B requires line-item details in their portal fields. Modern automation doesn’t discard this knowledge – it captures and builds upon it. Out platform observes how your most experienced team members handle different portals and turns their expertise into automated processes.

But the real transformation happens after those initial connections are established. This is where AR automation for portals evolves beyond simple task management into what we might call “predictive AR.” The system starts to recognize patterns that even experienced AR professionals might miss.

  • Customer payment behaviors across different portals
  • Common rejection triggers for specific customers or industries
  • Optimal times for invoice submission to ensure fastest payment
  • Early warning signs of potential payment delays

This intelligence transforms AR portal management from a reactive process to a proactive one. Instead of discovering a rejected invoice weeks after submission, teams get immediate notifications – often with suggested corrections based on historical data.

The Other Advantages

The Human Advantage

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this evolution towards AR automation for portals is how it changes the role of AR professionals. Rather than eliminating jobs, it elevates them. Team members who once spent hours on portal logins and data entry become payment strategy specialists. They use their understanding of customer relationships and payment patterns to fine-tune the automation, ensuring it not only processes payments efficiently but does so in a way that strengthens customer relationships.

The Data Advantage

One often overlooked benefit of centralizing portal management through automation is the wealth of payment data it generates. When all your portal interactions flow through a single, intelligent system, you gain insights that were previously impossible to access:

  • True payment cycle times across different customer segments
  • The real cost of portal management for different customers
  • Impact of different invoice formats on payment speed
  • Predictive analytics for cash flow forecasting

The “Touchless” Advantage

As businesses implement AR automation for portals, we’re seeing the emergence of what might be called “touchless AR” – a state where routine payment operations happen automatically, with human intervention required only for strategic decisions and relationship management.

The Cultural Advantage

One of the most fascinating aspects of this transformation is how it changes company culture. When AR teams break free from the daily grind of portal management, something remarkable happens: they become more proactive, more strategic, and more connected to the broader business objectives.

We’re seeing this play out in unexpected ways. Sales teams, traditionally disconnected from the payment process, gain visibility into customer payment behaviors that inform their renewal strategies. Treasury teams get more accurate cash flow forecasts, allowing for better investment decisions. Even customer success teams benefit, as they can spot and address payment friction points before they impact relationships.

How Do We Measure the Success of AR Automation For Portals?

The obvious metrics – reduced DSO, lower processing costs, faster payment cycles – tell only part of the story. The real success stories are about transformation:

  • AR teams becoming strategic advisors to the business
  • Finance leaders gaining true visibility into their cash position
  • Customers experiencing frictionless payment processes
  • Businesses scaling without proportionally growing their AR teams

For example, one customer we work with saw a 2x increase in their invoice approval rates with Monto. Another customer now collects payments 21% faster.

These results aren’t limited to large enterprises or specific industries. We’re seeing similar outcomes across the business spectrum, from fast-growing startups to established multinationals. The common thread? A recognition that portal management isn’t just an AR problem – it’s a business problem that demands a strategic solution.

Yet, many businesses hesitate, caught between the pain of manual portal management and the perceived complexity of automation for portals. They worry about disrupting existing processes, about implementation time, about whether their team will adapt. These are valid concerns, but they pale in comparison to the risk of inaction.

Remember: payment portals aren’t going away. In fact, with over 50% of global mid-market and large enterprises expected to deploy payment portals by next year (Gartner), and regulations in 55+ countries mandating electronic invoicing platforms, portal proliferation is accelerating. The question isn’t whether to implement AR automation for portals, but how quickly you can make the transition.

Looking Ahead

The line between automated and manual AR operations will become the line between competitive and struggling businesses. The companies that thrive will be those that view AR automation for portals not as a cost to minimize, but as an investment in their future – an investment in better cash flow, stronger customer relationships, and more strategic use of their financial talent.

The time to start this journey isn’t next quarter or next year. It’s now. Your AR team deserves better than spending their days jumping between portals. Your business deserves better than delayed payments and uncertain cash flow. And your customers deserve better than a payment process fragmented by manual interventions and delays.

The technology exists. The path is clear. The only question remaining is: When will you take the first step toward transforming your AR operations for the digital age?

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