Credit Management on Steroids
In the ever more cut-throat world of business, innovation is often the only competitive edge.
When that innovation is in collecting money faster, this results in a major competitive edge. e-Invoicing can enable exactly that.
Credit Management nightmare – the audit trail
Every credit manager will be familiar with the increased regulatory pressure to preserve transaction histories. Traditionally this meant volumes of filed paper. But thankfully e-invoicing removes this burden, replacing it with highly searchable electronic archives. Every invoice, statement and payment record is now immediately available.
Auditors can now export and review invoicing records far more quickly, taking up less valuable time and asking fewer questions.
Insight into and resolution of delays
Our clients routinely report faster payments, less hassle and less delinquency once they have implemented e-invoicing. One of the main reasons for this is that Corcentric is focused on invoice delivery, ensuring payment status is instantly visible. Late payments are identified quickly, allowing for faster resolution of problems.
Knowing where delays routinely occur can allow for preemptive measures to ensure prompt payment.
According to a recent Atradius report 12% of B2B invoices (in Western Europe) are delayed due to incorrect information, and 11% were delayed due to being sent to the wrong person. At Corcentric, we enable customers to self-serve and update their contact details when they change. This, in conjunction with the automation of invoice production, dramatically reduces the percentage of errors in invoicing – resulting in fewer delays.
In some cases, where EDI isn’t implemented and invoices are sent by email, there may be delivery problems (perhaps due to email outage, or change in email address). In these cases, it’s wise to have a solution that automatically retries several times and then resolves the issue through another contact method, such as the automatic print and postage of the invoice.
Credit Management automation
The biggest threat to business success is, often, wasted time. With many of the steps in traditional, paper-based, invoicing requiring repetitive work, these are ideal for automation. Removing the copy-and-paste of contact details, or repetitive print, stuff, seal and franking of posted invoices allows accounts receivable teams to focus on more profitable activity such as chasing late payments and resolving issues.
Credit Management in the 21st Century
There are few areas of business not significantly modernized by computers these days. Credit management and accounts receivable departments are one of the few areas where the pace of modernization is slower though. In part, this is due to the sensitive (and valuable) nature of invoicing processes. But signification savings can be achieved when this aspect of the business is modernized through e-invoicing and automated processes.
Whether you are looking to improve free cash flow, or reduce the cost of paper-based invoicing, you can use some of the simple questions in our guide to writing a business case for e-invoicing to determine how much you could save.