Improve Your Payment Acceptance Rates with Payference for NetSuite

It’s always good when you can identify a singular change that benefits both your business and your customers. Improving the way your customers can make B2B payments is one of those things. This includes expanding the payment methods that you accept and also offering customers the ultimate convenience with a self-serve portal. Are you thinking, “Wait a minute. I work in NetSuite. I can’t do that.” Well, you can if you add Payference to the mix.

In this blog, we’ll introduce you to a third-party cash management application that seamlessly integrates with NetSuite to make it possible for you to accept a wide range of payment types and offers a payment portal so your customers can log in, view their account and easily make payments. This integration takes NetSuite up a notch, enhancing many of its functions to streamline your accounts receivable process. It enables you to save time, boost efficiency, accelerate collections and improve your customer relationships.

In addition to these benefits, Payference can help you grow your business. By offering better service, consistency, and safer, more convenient ways of making payments, you’ll be able to manage more customers without increasing stress loads on your current AR team. You’ll also be in a position to attract–and retain–larger clients.

Before diving into Payference, let’s take a broader look at the nature of traditional B2B payments.

The problem with limited payment acceptance and B2B Payments

When one business pays another for goods or services, that’s a B2B payment. Typically, B2B payments are more time consuming to process than business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions because of their size and complexity. It takes longer to process a B2B payment due to the approval process, account reconciliation and all the steps in between. 

These factors mean that the payment needs of B2B customers are vastly different from individual buyers. And that means that businesses that sell to other businesses need more sophisticated accounts receivable processes to handle the higher amounts and more complicated remittances–they need an automated accounts receivable system.

Surprisingly, even in today’s increasingly digital world, a staggering number of B2B payments are still made with paper checks and ACH transfers. But driven by the need for efficiency and customers’ desire for convenience, digitization is the future. Other payment methods are becoming more common in the B2B world:

Credit cards –This is a popular method for many customers. Suppliers, on the other hand, don’t love the cost of accepting this kind of payment, but recognize it’s crucial to take credit card payments or risk losing too much business.

Virtual credit cards–Here’s another option that’s growing in popularity on both sides of B2B payments. These cards are intended for one-time use and have a unique 16-digit number that’s digitally generated, making them one of the most secure payment methods.

Digital wallets–Digital payment services such as PayPal, Apple Pay, Venmo and others fall into the category of digital wallets. These allow payments to be transferred electronically from a customer’s account to the supplier’s.

eChecks–These electronic checks are also known as direct debits. They include the same information that a paper check would, but they are managed digitally. This type of payment is faster than paper checks and costs less than a credit card payment. 

Wire transfers–Though wire transfers are not used widely in the B2B world, they do represent a large percentage of payment volume because they are used mostly for international transactions and large amounts. Three systems typically manage wire transfers and as soon as the funds are received in the designated account, they are available. While the immediacy is attractive to some businesses, the fact that wire transfers are the least secure of B2B payments is a drawback.

Traditional B2B payments -- There has to be a better way to improve payment acceptance rates

Paper checks and other traditional payment methods significantly impede the B2B accounts receivable process. Non-digital payments are inefficient, providing limited data and poor visibility. Not only that, they’re inconvenient for customers and costly for suppliers to process. Here’s a short list of the negatives associated with accepting non-digital methods of payment.

Slower payment processing

Non-digital payment methods take more time to process, making the overall payment cycle longer than it needs to be. These delays can have a negative impact on impact cash flow. On the other hand, electronic methods decrease the payment cycle for both AR and AP.

Higher processing costs

The costs associated with processing traditional B2B payments are usually absorbed by the supplier. Processing paper checks requires more man hours, and wire transfers can come with intermediary and currency conversion fees.

Late payments

Manual processes, disputes over payments, inefficient workflows, poor visibility, and fund transfer delays all contribute to the occurrence of late payments, which in turn affects cash flow.

Reduced cash flow

Manual processing of paper checks is prone to error and a waste of an AR team’s talent. Checks sent through the mail are unpredictable and add days to the settling of accounts.

In the meantime, cash flow is impacted.

Reduced security

Businesses are at higher risk for fraud around payment activity. And traditional payment methods are more at risk than electronic ones because it’s easier for bad actors to retrieve sensitive information from the former. 

The need for increasing security around payments means that businesses have to incur costs for fraud detection software or more staff to be on alert for fraudulent or questionable activity.

Lack of flexibility

Traditional payment methods involve manual effort, and the systems involved are disconnected which hampers collaboration between customers and suppliers and suppliers and internal departments. Additionally, because these payment methods are not integrated with NetSuite, there’s almost no transparency and only limited information to use for remittance advice. With insufficient integration, it’s not easy for businesses to collaborate with others who use digital payment methods.

All these obstacles get in the way of customers who are looking for convenience when it comes to making payments. Thankfully, NetSuite users can remove all these roadblocks by simply adding NetSuite Payment Acceptance from Payference. 

How to Improve Your Payment Acceptance Rates with Payference And NetSuite

NetSuite is a great tool for core accounting and inventory processes, but is lacking when it comes to payment acceptance and the ability to easily and correctly organize cash flow coming into the business. Expanding the types of payments you accept and making it easy for customers to make payments work hand in hand to solve the problems with traditional B2B payment options. By integrating a solution that provides both of these capabilities, you quickly will enjoy these benefits:

• Faster payments

• Increased cash flow

• More secure payments

• Increased efficiency in AR processes

• Decreased payment processing costs

• More satisfied customers

NetSuite users who want to enhance the platform’s performance can find many solutions to choose from. At first glance, this seems like good news. But the problem is that most of those applications are extremely complex, offering much more functionality than a mid-market size business needs–which makes them unaffordable, not cost-effective at all.

Payference built its NetSuite Integration precisely to fill the need of small to mid-market size businesses who want to continue using their ERP but desire advanced functionality. They want a solution that’s easy to use, offers seamless integration and fits their budget.

Adding Payference allows you to accept a broad range of digital payment methods. This encourages speedier customer payments because you’ve removed the barriers to making payments. 

It also includes a self-serve payment portal that allows businesses to offer their customers 24 hour access to their accounts. So instead of your team spending hours taking credit card payments over the phone or helping customers with other payment issues, they can focus on more valuable tasks. This one feature alone provides significant time savings for you, can reduce DSO, positively affects cash flow and drastically improves the customer experience.

Curious to see how Payference works with NetSuite? It’s easy to set up a demo at a time that’s convenient for you.