How AR and AP Help Improve Business Cashflow?

By CFO Tech Outlook | Wednesday, September 16, 2020

If businesses agree to accept online payments, they can make a profit by charging the customers automatically via an auto-charge option.

Fremont, CA: Cashflow is the lifeblood of businesses. Not having a proper system in place to manage cash flow can make managing a small business more expensive, especially when facing a crisis. However, properly managing cash flow can be time-absorbing and tricky. In order to operate smoothly, businesses need to track the money flowing in and out. Automating AR and Ap can enable businesses to operate the processes that impact cashflow seamlessly.

Let us look at the contributions of AR and AP to improving cash flow:

AR Benefits

Matching Retainer Invoices to Estimates

When one sends an estimate to customers, and they approve it, businesses can ask for an advance payment or retainer payment before they embark on that project. While this is an effective way to keep cash flowing in, having several customers in the retainer stage at the same time can make it difficult for businesses to track the retainer payments. An automated system can effortlessly convert customer-approved estimates to retainer invoices, deduct the retainer amount from the total amount due for future invoices, and send the retainer invoices to the customers.

Online Payments

If businesses agree to accept online payments, they can make a profit by charging the customers automatically via an auto-charge option.

Since the customer does not require to re-enter their card credentials for every payment, it is less likely that businesses would run into invalid card info or failed payments. It helps businesses save time and keep the payments coming in on a more reliable basis.

AP Benefits

Payment Approval

AP staff deal with a lot of invoices and many of them need approval from a manager. Automating the approval process can save a lot of time and make it more efficient. Once an invoice is approved, it will come back to the AP staff so they can initiate payment.

Payment Reminders

When facing a cashflow crisis, businesses may consider prioritizing the bills they want to pay off first instead of following the order in which they were received. Once it is decided when the business would start paying each bill, they can set up SMS and email reminders so that their AP team does not miss any deadlines.