Simple Tips to Streamline Finance Processes
Written by the experts at American Express
Facing challenges with cash flow and payment processing? Here are some strategies and solutions you can apply to simplify and improve business finance processes:
Identify Your Finance Function Pain Points
It sounds obvious, but before looking for solutions to finance challenges, identify the real pain points. Some common challenges facing these departments include:
- Complicated or legacy accounts receivables and payables tools and processes with steep learning curves that cause delays or inconsistencies
- Overflow of transactions and time-consuming or non-value manual tasks
- Ongoing cash flow issues, such as constantly struggling between getting quicker payment receipts and deferring payments to suppliers/vendors, while simultaneously dealing with insufficient cash to make payroll or other key expenses
- Poor integration between banking transactional, accounting and payment systems
- Partial view of business spend and suppliers
Meet Your Finance Department’s Needs
Although the challenges facing finance departments may seem complicated, business finance professionals have clear priorities, which include:
- Continuous access to enough cash to meet required bill payments
- A method or tool to help negotiate longer/better supplier payment terms like an American Express supplier payment solution
- A simpler and faster way to accept payments
When these needs are met, customers are happier, financial processes become more efficient and interaction with vendors and suppliers improves. It’s a win-win-win situation.
Leverage Continuous Access to Cash with Unsecured Financing
Getting unsecured credit is an efficient and timely solution that complements more traditional means of financing and supports business cash flow challenges. Use a business credit card to pay bills when they’re due. This alleviates the need to defer supplier/vendor payments in anticipation of customer payments or receivables and may enable early pay discounts and other cost efficiencies.
American Express® Cardmembers, for instance, can leverage up to 55 interest-free days¹ depending on the purchase date, payment date and billing cycle.
You can also save time and effort by referring to credit card statement items when completing monthly bookkeeping and accounting tasks.
Accelerate Your Payments Collections
In addition to paying your suppliers on a timely basis and enabling your cash flow with an American Express Card, accepting it for your American Express payments collections from customers means you can enable efficiencies across your supply chain. You’ll get paid faster, and you’ll save time, money and effort in several other ways.
These include:
- Flexibility on your credit card fees by negotiating related costs with your suppliers and creating synergies
- Reduced costs and processing time associated with cheques, EFTs and wire transfers
- Reduced costs of written off accounts (American Express takes care of collections), credit checks and issuing invoices
- An opportunity to expand your customer base to those businesses and individuals who prefer to pay with their selected credit card
- Key customer insights through data spend analytics of electronic American Express transactions
These convenient and simple methods of accepting and issuing payments can make for more streamlined finance departments and more satisfied customers.
Want to learn more about payment solutions that’ll simplify and improve business finance processes? Increase efficiency and put more back into business – speak to an American Express Representative today, or visit americanexpress.ca/partnerships