Sweeten Your A/R Operations | FTNI Blog

Valentine’s Day is a time for love and appreciation. And, while you might not be exchanging chocolates and flowers this Valentine’s with your customers, you can still show them some love by gifting something even better—the payment options they want, all within a single payment system. 

With a modular, accounts receivable (A/R) automation platform, your business is able to conveniently deliver customers with multiple payment options. Your customers are able to pay when, where and how they want. And, as all businesses know, happy customers are loyal customers. Delivering multiple payment method options via various payment channels is an easy way to sweeten your customers’ day.

Below are five heartfelt considerations to help enhance the customer payment experience, while seamlessly optimizing your back-office payment processing operations. 

Delivering customers with multiple payment method options across different payment channels, all from a single platform, provides not only a seamless user experience for customers, but also consolidated oversight of all incoming payment information for your internal A/R staff.

Whether its electronic payment capabilities via online or mobile payment solutions, advanced check processing and management solutions, or embedded payment technology, your business is able to offer customers a bouquet of payment options, ensuring there is a solution and payment method for everyone. 

Convenient, contactless online payment options allow businesses multiple ways to securely accept one-time and recurring payments from customers. With online payment solutions that support Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) capabilities, customers are able to conveniently make payments online, when and where they want. 

It will make their heart skip a beat!

Self-service online payment solutions provide your customers with a way to make contactless payments electronically, while also delivering your back-office A/R staff with centralized oversight of all payment information. Online payment acceptance and electronic invoicing enhances the user experience and customer convenience. It’s a win-win that your customers will fall in love with.

Just like the overflow of candy and cards received on Valentine’s Day, many businesses still receive a steady stream of paper checks and remittance documents across their A/R organization. In order to efficiently handle the acceptance, processing and posting of paper checks and remittance documents, advanced check and document processing solutions can help your organization to accelerate paper-based receivable operations.

With advanced check processing solutions, your business is able to scan in checks and associated remittance documents while also seamlessly viewing, associating and storing all account and payment information in a highly-secure, central location. 

And, it gets even sweeter. In addition to streamlining check processing, your organization can also implement a solution to speed document processing covering tens, even hundreds, of invoices. Enhanced Document Processing (EDP) solutions provide your back-office with the tools to eliminate the paper chase that comes with paper-based receivables, and the associated monotony of manual data entry.

Utilizing AI to automatically capture and read data from semi-structured remittance documents and long-form data tables from PDFs, scanned images and files, EDP is able to populate data within your A/R platform for seamless cash application and reconciliation.

Streamlining paper-based receivables not only helps your organization, but also frees up more time for your A/R staff to focus on higher value functions such as exception handling, and customer service. There will be no more broken hearts over paper-based receivables. 

Embedded payment acceptance options directly integrate payment acceptance capabilities into your existing web pages, interfaces, and mobile applications. 

With embedded payment technology, your business is able to streamline and automate A/R operations, reduce payment friction, and improve the overall payment experience for customers. Additionally, embedded payment options delivered through an A/R automation technology partner allow your business to accept any payment method, via any payment channel. By reducing payment friction and streamlining receiving operations, your A/R staff can focus on what matters most: delivering a payment experience your customers will love. 

Communication is the heart of any relationship, including with your customers. By simplifying collections and speeding payment acceptance through a proactive collections module, your business is able to accelerate payment processing operations while also keeping customers informed about their outstanding payments and account information.

Traditional collection methods can often be time-consuming, error-prone and lead to delays in payment acceptance, processing, and posting. This can disrupt cash flow and create operational efficiencies across back-office receivable operations. With proactive collections, your organization is able to have detailed insight into outstanding invoices and overdue payments across customer accounts.

Proactive collections solutions automatically alerts customers of new invoices, and sends payment reminders before and after the payment due date until the payment is settled. In turn, this ensures timely follow-up which drives increased levels of self-service for customers, and reduces payment delays.

______________________________

By implementing these thoughtful payment solutions, you’re offering more than just convenience and payment options—you’re creating a frictionless experience that strengthens you and your customers’ relationships. 

Whether it’s offering multiple ways to pay, embedding payment acceptance capabilities into existing interfaces and systems, or simplifying collections operations, each step makes it easier for customers to say “yes” to doing business with you.

So, why not put a little love into your payment process this Valentine’s Day? 

Happy Valentine's Day!

1.  PYMNTS Report | Big Three: How Choice, Confidence and Convenience Drive Payment Optimization | January 2025

2. PYMNTS Report | Cutting the Checks: Boosting Commercial Payment Speed and Security With Virtual Cards| November 2024