Late payments are a persistent problem in the world of receivables. According to Atradius, over 55% of all B2B invoiced sales are currently overdue. Adding insult to injury, bad debt impacts 9% of all B2B credit-based sales. So why are B2B businesses struggling with late payments?
The big shift in how businesses get paid
Billing portal adoption has surged over the last 5-7 years, but accounts receivable technology hasn’t kept pace. Customers increasingly want and expect their suppliers to use billing portals. For many AR teams, this means handling hundreds of different invoices on a monthly or even weekly basis, each requiring interaction with a range of customer AP portals, all with unique requirements.
This disparity has caused significant problems for AR teams:
- Being asked to use customers’ portals to do business.
- Logging into third-party portals multiple times a day to check invoice statuses and follow up on rejections or disputes.
- Managing multiple logins, vendor setups, and training staff on these systems.
- Compiling regular reports on outstanding receivables.
- Dealing with ever-changing buyer data requirements, including endless manual data entry.
How the AP portal workflow causes late payments
Handling a few AP portals might be manageable. But when you’re dealing with multiple portals, the manual work multiplies, leading to delayed payments and cash flow issues.
- Excessive time and resources are spent on manual data entry and loading invoices to AP portals.
- Invoices get rejected due to not being in the exact format requested by customers.
- Delays in cash collection and increased DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) due to manually keying in invoices waiting to be uploaded and rejected invoices.
- Inability to meet customer expectations, especially when connecting to their preferred portal.
Building individual integrations is not the solution
If you’ve tried using RPA (robotic process automation) to automate AP portal entry and reporting, you know it’s costly and requires constant maintenance to keep up with each customer changes in AP portals. While RPA is a step above manually managing billing portals and, as a result, one step closer to getting paid on time, these portals and their requirements are dynamic.
As you sign new customers with different portal requirements (different customers using the same portal can still have a wildly different setup!), you have to constantly tweak your automations to make sure they still work, or build new ones from scratch. For high-growth businesses signing multiple new clients every month, this process of pressure-testing automations is almost as labor-intensive as managing the portals directly. Having an ecosystem of fragile automations for each workflow is not effective for getting every invoice delivered, approved, and paid on time.
The real solution: fully integrated AP portals with out-of-the-box automation
AP portals have evolved to allow integration with supplier systems (ERPs, accounting/billing systems). With these integrations, suppliers can finally reap the benefits of increased efficiency from AP portals by connecting to all of their portals in one place. Integrations like this have paved the way for truly useful portal automation software, like Monto, the first-ever platform that integrates with every AP portal and automates the end-to-end process of getting paid. Instead of building individual automation, suppliers benefit from an out-of-the-box platform that connects to every possible portal and automates the process of getting paid across each one on their behalf.
With you’re fully integrated into your customers’ AP portals, you’ll experience:
- No need for employees to constantly log into customer billing portals.
- Elimination of manual entry and reporting.
- Near real-time data retrieval and notification of invoice statuses across every portal
- Quick and easy management of customer and billing portal data changes.
- Accurate reporting of invoice statuses
- Automation of invoices to match exact customer requirements.
All of this boils down to: more accurate invoicing, zero data entry errors, and reduced late payments.
The added benefit of AP portal automation: visibility over debtors
A majorly overlooked advantage of automation is the ability to better understand your customers and their payment behavior. Automated systems offer greater visibility over debtors, helping you identify patterns or issues and address them proactively. For instance, if a particular customer is consistently late with payments, you can take steps to address the issue before it escalates. This might involve discussing their payment behavior and finding a solution that works for both parties.
You should get paid on time, every time.
Automating AP portal processes not only reduces late payments but also boosts efficiency, enhances visibility, and improves customer relationships. It’s time to embrace end-to-end automation and take your AR process to the next level.
To learn more about how Monto can reduce late payments, click here.
