HomeLearning CenterA CFO’s Guide to Choosing the Right Accounts Receivable Software

A CFO’s Guide to Choosing the Right Accounts Receivable Software

For CFOs, implementing accounts receivable automation software is pivotal in optimizing cash flow management. By leveraging advanced technology to streamline receivables processes, CFOs can ensure a more efficient and accurate monitoring of cash inflow from customer transactions. Automation reduces manual errors and accelerates the collection cycle, enabling businesses to access funds more quickly.

Additionally, the automated system facilitates real-time visibility into accounts receivables, empowering CFOs to make informed decisions based on up-to-date financial data. This proactive approach allows CFOs to identify potential cash flow bottlenecks and implement strategic measures to mitigate risks promptly. With a focus on receivables automation, CFOs can enhance financial forecasting accuracy and optimize working capital, ultimately contributing to better overall financial health for the organization.

Let’s dive deeper into the advantages of implementing an accounts receivable automation software for the office of the CFO.

What is an Accounts Receivable Software?

Accounts receivable software is a tool that businesses can use to manage and keep track of their accounts receivable. By automating invoicing, payment, and collection processes, this software can save businesses time and effort.

Additionally, accounts receivable software can provide valuable insights into a company’s financial data, such as identifying top-performing customers and identifying overdue invoices.

Peakflo offers accounts receivable software that enables businesses to quickly generate and send invoices, set credit terms, and manage collections more effectively.

By using this software, businesses can improve their liquidity, reduce the time it takes to convert credit to cash and seize new investment opportunities.

Furthermore, finance teams can access real-time information about all aspects of the accounts receivable process at the individual and company-wide levels. It enables them to monitor and manage their finances more effectively.

Who Should Consider Adopting Accounts Receivable Software?

Accounts receivable automation software is a valuable asset for businesses of all sizes, providing streamlined financial processes and enhanced cash flow management. While all businesses can benefit, it is particularly crucial for larger companies and mid-size enterprises. These organizations, handling a higher volume of transactions, often face complexities in managing accounts receivables efficiently.

For larger enterprises, the sheer scale of transactions can lead to manual errors and delays, making automation a necessity for maintaining financial agility. Mid-size companies, seeking to scale operations, can leverage accounts receivable automation to establish a robust foundation for sustainable growth.

Traditional companies, too, stand to gain significantly from automation, as it helps modernize and optimize financial operations. Additionally, businesses in industries with complex billing structures, such as subscription-based services or project-based billing, can benefit from automation to handle diverse billing scenarios efficiently.

Moreover, businesses dealing with substantial transaction volumes or aspiring to enhance financial efficiency should actively seek out accounts receivable automation software to drive operational excellence and propel revenue growth.

accounts receivable software

Benefits of Implementing an Accounts Receivable Software

Listed below are the benefits of implementing accounts receivable software:

  • Improve processes efficiency
  • Increase data accuracy
  • Improve cash flow and working capital
  • Reduce operational costs
  • Enhance customer experience and communication
  • Provide actionable insights and automate report generation
  • Improve compliance
  • Facilitate the highest security standards

Benefits of Implementing an Accounts Receivable Software

1. Improve Processes Efficiency

One of the biggest benefits of using accounts receivable software is automating your accounts receivable processes and simplifying your life. Automated posting of order transactions to general or AR ledgers with precise tax calculations for each invoice allows for fast, accurate, and precise tax filing. It can save businesses a lot of time and money by ensuring that taxes are correctly calculated and processed promptly. The software can also help businesses keep track of their G&A expenses and income so that they can make informed decisions about their finances.

2. Increase Data Accuracy

Manual tracking of accounts receivable can be error-prone, leading to missed payments, incorrect invoices, and other issues. With accounts receivable software, businesses can automate many of these processes, reducing the risk of errors and ensuring that invoices are accurate and payments are processed correctly.

3. Improve Cash Flow and Working Capital

Cash flow is crucial for any business. Accounts receivable software can help businesses achieve peak cash flows and working capital by automating payment reminders and streamlining the payment process, businesses can accelerate payment times and reduce the time it takes to receive payments from customers.

4. Reduce Operational Costs

Using accounts receivable software can also help businesses reduce operational costs. By automating many of the processes involved in managing accounts receivable, businesses can save time and reduce the need for manual labor. This can lead to lower labor costs and higher productivity, as well as a reduction in costly errors.

Find out how much your business can save by automating end-to-end finance operations.

saving calculator

5. Enhance Customer Experience and Communication

Accounts receivable software can also enhance the customer experience. By providing customers with automated multi-channel payment reminders and real-time updates on invoice status, businesses can improve communication and build stronger relationships with their customers. It also offers an open forum for customers to communicate with the company, tag specific stakeholders in the conversations, and escalate problems to higher authorities if necessary. All these communications are securely stored in the form of an audit trail within the solution. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

6. Provide Actionable Insights

Accounts receivable software provides robust reporting capabilities that allow businesses to track and monitor their financial operations in real-time. It enables you to track essential accounts receivable metrics such as cash flow, DSO, CEI, and so on. It enables businesses to make data-driven decisions and identify potential issues before they become major problems.

7. Improve Compliance

Accounts receivable software can help businesses improve compliance by automating compliance-related tasks, such as tracking payments and managing credit terms. This ensures that businesses are following all applicable regulations and guidelines. This can help businesses avoid costly penalties and legal issues.

8. Facilitate the Highest Security Standards

Accounts receivable software provides robust data security features that protect sensitive financial information from unauthorized access, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of financial data.

Steps to Choose the Right Accounts Receivable Software

  • Take inputs from the team and clearly outline the goals you want to achieve with accounts receivable software.
  • Research and evaluate the features offered by different accounts receivable software and match them with your specific requirements.
  • Shortlist solution providers and take demos of their software.
  • Choose software that can scale with your business needs and accommodate future growth.
  • Confirm that the accounts receivable software can integrate seamlessly with your existing software ecosystem and business processes.
  • Prioritize software with an intuitive interface and a positive user experience.
  • Ensure the availability of robust technical support and training resources for a smooth implementation process.

ar software

Top Features of Peakflo’s Accounts Receivable Software

Peakflo’s Accounts Receivable solution provides a host of benefits to businesses.

By automating key financial processes like payment processing, invoicing, and reporting, this software helps businesses manage their finances more effectively, and save time and money on administrative and accounting functions. It gives finance leaders a better way of managing business cash flow and overall financial health.

The company’s size and goals for improving accounts receivable will determine the best accounting software. Here are some features you get:

Cash Flow Management

With Peakflo’s software, you can automate the account receivable process. This means you can save time on manual tasks, such as data entry and invoicing. The software can also help you keep track of payments and customers’ credit balances.

Automate invoicing and payments by consolidating them with one vendor. This will simplify your sales, billing, and payment processes, and make it easier to keep track of your finances.

This will reduce friction and increase your cash flow in your business. By reducing the amount of time and effort required to manage your finances, you’ll be able to focus more on generating revenue and growing your business more quickly.

In addition, having a healthy cash flow will give you the flexibility to make investments and take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

Cash flow analytics

Digital B2B Payments

Accepting payments from customers is an essential part of running any business. However, managing payment processing and invoicing can be a time-consuming and complex task.

This is where Peakflo’s payment portals come in. Our payment processing channel enables businesses to accept from all major channels, including ACH payments, credit card or online payments, wire transfers, and EFTs.

As a result, businesses can keep track of their finances and avoid any potential missed or late payments. This can help improve cash flow and ensure that businesses have the funds they need to operate and grow.

Self serve portal for customers to view and clear invoice payments quicker

Automated Credit Requests

Automated credit applications can help you move customers through the application process faster. By automating the process, you can eliminate manual data entry and reduce the chances of errors. This can help you get approvals faster and keep your customers happy.

Automation software also collects third-party information and helps you make quicker decisions. This is because they have access to a wider range of data than you do, and they can use this to process information more quickly.

Invoice Generation and Distribution

Invoicing is a critical aspect of any business operation, but it can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive task. That’s where electronic invoicing comes in.

Electronic invoicing, or e-invoicing, is a technology that allows businesses to create, send, and receive invoices digitally. By using e-invoicing, businesses can streamline their invoicing workflows, reduce the time and labor involved in manually entering invoice data, and improve cash flow by getting paid faster.

One of the most significant advantages of e-invoicing is that it can integrate with the most popular AP portals through APIs. This makes it easy for businesses to quickly deliver invoices and receive payments, helping to streamline accounting processes and get paid faster. The integration of accounts receivable software with e-invoicing portals can help businesses eliminate the need for manual entry of data and reduce errors.

Moreover, customers can view and pay invoices 24 hours a day via self-service billing or payment portals. This allows customers to pay their bills at their convenience, helping businesses get paid faster.

Automated Cash Application

With Peakflo, customers can easily check their unapplied payments and apply the payment to the correct invoices with a single click. It also allows your customers to apply partial payments to invoices and check their remaining overdue payments. This optimized system enhances customer experience, reduces administrative burdens, and fosters a smoother cash application process.

Automated Collection Follow-ups

Peakflo offers multi-channel reminders, including email, SMS, and WhatsApp, based on an escalation matrix that supports an efficient collection strategy. Businesses can set up templates and reminders that are tailored to each customer’s payment history and behavior. This approach ensures that customers receive timely reminders and can choose to pay using the method that works best for them.

Automated WhatsApp payment reminder

Instant Reconciliation

Peakflo’s accounts receivable software provides instant reconciliation, enabling businesses to reconcile their financial data quickly and accurately. One key factor contributing to this is the integration of the software with ERP systems.

Peakflo’s integration capabilities allow businesses to sync financial data across multiple platforms, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors. This integration makes it easy for businesses to reconcile their financial data in real-time, ensuring that their books are always up-to-date and accurate.

One of the features that enables instant reconciliation in Peakflo’s accounts receivable software is the use of static and dynamic virtual accounts (VA). Static VA allows businesses to create a unique virtual account for each customer, making it easy to track payments and transactions. Dynamic VA takes this a step further, automatically generating unique virtual accounts for each transaction, providing even greater accuracy and flexibility.

Static and dynamic virtual accounts

Another important feature of Peakflo’s accounts receivable software is accurate, real-time, and automatic data matching. The software can match invoices, transactions, credit notes, and payments automatically, ensuring that all financial data is reconciled accurately and in real-time. This feature saves businesses time and effort by eliminating the need for manual reconciliation and reducing the risk of errors.

Dynamic Reporting and Analytics

Peakflo provides the insight you need with configurable dashboards, reports, and KPIs to track cash flow management, automate quote-to-order fulfillment, and integrate planning and budgeting. Our accounts receivable software provides real-time customer aging, invoice analysis, and recurring invoice calculations. There are also exceptional reports that can flag any account anomalies. This makes it easy to keep track of your finances and ensure your business is running smoothly.

accounts receivable software reports

Do You Want to Automate the Receivables Process?

Automating your invoicing process can help you free up time and make it easier to handle larger volumes of complex invoices.

By automating your process, you can avoid the need to manually create and send invoices, which can save you a significant amount of time. In addition, automating your process can help you manage large volumes of invoices more efficiently, as you will no longer need to manually keep track of each invoice.

It is important to carefully evaluate the options and choose the right partner. There are many factors to consider, such as compatibility, interests, and goals. Taking the time to find the right partner can lead to a more fulfilling and lasting relationship.

There are many automated accounts receivable software solutions available, but they can often be difficult to set up and configure. A managed service solution like Peakflo can be a great alternative, as it offers all the same benefits without the need for complex setup or configuration.

This allows you to focus on your account receivable process and outsources the technical complexity. This arrangement is often used by businesses that have a lot of invoices to process, but lack the in-house resources to do so efficiently.

By outsourcing the account receivable function, businesses can free up time and resources to focus on other areas of their business.

Using one of the best accounts receivable software like Peakflo, you can save a lot of time each month. You won’t have to worry about uploading files manually to your customers’ AP portals or managing paper and electronic invoices separately.

With Peakflo, everything can be done through one process, making your life a lot easier. It is also an easy-to-use software that can be used by anyone with a basic understanding of computers.

Automated invoices can also improve the accuracy and timeliness of delivery information. You can eliminate the risk of production errors and copy-paste by pulling data directly from your ERP software. This way, you can be sure that your invoices are always accurate, and that delivery information is delivered promptly.

empower finance team with accounts receivable software

Automate AR with Peakflo

Peakflo’s Accounts Receivable solution is reliable and solves all basic AR problems. Its features include:

  • Smart Payment retries to manage payment failures or delinquencies
  • Providing flexible payment terms to your customers is a great way to retain them
  • Increase your customer base through easy coupon creation and usage tracking
  • AR dashboards this tool to measure the important KPIs, such as AR aging, collections made by dunning efforts, and Days Sales Outstanding (DSO).

The solution can save you time and money, as well as provide a higher level of customer service.

Peakflo’s recurring billing, payments, and revenue recognition automate the entire process so you can focus on what matters. This solution is designed to streamline your business operations and improve your bottomline.