Cash flow is one of the major determining factors of whether a produce business succeeds or fails. The rate at which money comes in and goes out of your produce business directly affects how your business grows.
But keeping that stream of income steady and uninterrupted can be serious work—maybe even too much work when business is going well. This is where payment automation comes in.
What is Payment Automation?
Payment automation is any process that helps businesses computerize the process of receiving and making payments. This often involves the use of digitized payment systems, which manage the approval of payments, automate payment processes, and confirm payment.
Basically, this process is used to improve the speed and ease of payment, and reduces the amount of human error present in payment transactions. These are just the basic effects of payment automation though, and there are a lot more benefits to automating your produce payments.
Below are other major benefits of automating your produce business’ payment process.
8 Benefits of Automating your Produce Business’ Payment Process
1. Fraud Protection
Fraud, when it exists in any business, is a really big problem. The produce business is no exception, and you’d be surprised at just how much the produce industry loses to fraud yearly. A good majority of that is internal fraud. With payment automation, your business becomes a lot less at risk of this ever happening.
There are quite a number of reasons why this is the case. First is the fact that automated payment systems ensure your business transactions are carried out by computers. There’s also the fact that payment automation makes transactions more transparent, making it much harder for fraudulent transactions to go unnoticed.
2. Fewer Errors
It’s no news that human efficiency has a limit. The longer we work and the more stress we’re under, the more likely we are to make mistakes. When this work involves something as important as the finances of a business, this “little” mistake can become very costly very quickly.
Payment automation drastically reduces the chances of this happening by reducing the level of human involvement in the process, or eliminating it altogether.
3. Easy Access to Invoices and Other Transaction Documents
Keeping track of every transaction that takes place in your business is very important. This can be stressful with traditional paper documentation, especially when the business is a big one. Then there’s the fact that paper can be easily misplaced or damaged. Not to mention, paper documents need to be stored in physical locations and can only be retrieved from that exact location.
Automated payment systems have none of these problems. Keeping track of transactions is much easier, and there’s less chance of documents getting misplaced or damaged. You can access needed documents from remote locations.
4. Easy Integration with Existing Technology
Automated payment systems, especially those provided by state-of-the-art service providers, provide the extra benefit of being easily integrated with existing technology. This means you don’t just get the basic advantages of the automated payment system, but you also get optimized functionality that improves the efficiency of both the payment solution and other existing systems.
5. Timely Payment every single time
Everyone hates when payments get delayed for whatever reason. Sure, we might tolerate it every once in a while, but when this becomes a habit, it doesn’t take long to start considering alternatives. Your suppliers are no exception and you don’t want to ruin a good deal because you can’t keep up with all those transactions.
Payment automation helps solve this problem, with automated payments always being made right on time. You can even schedule payments to be made at a later date, or even set recurring payments to be made regularly without needing to personally monitor each transaction.
6. Improved Business Relationships
Making timely payments brings a smile to every business owner’s face. The knowledge that you can trust your customer to make payments right on time without causing any hassles or headaches brings you peace of mind—and your suppliers feel the same way. A happy supplier is one you can trust to offer you the best possible services.
7. Improved Confidence in Transactions
Having your payments processed automatically can give you extra confidence. You’re better off with an automated payment system since your payments are being executed by a system that’s essentially incapable of making mistakes. With an automated system, all your invoices are also safely documented and are readily available if the need ever arises.
8. Better Utilization of Manpower
Payment automation means you and your workers need to do little to no work on approving and managing payments. That extra time can be spent doing other, more important things for the business. With your automated system handling the simple tasks of keeping your transactions and payments sorted, you and your employees can now pay more attention to the more important things that computers can’t do for your business.
END THOUGHTS
Cash flow is essentially the lifeblood of any business. The inflow and outflow of cash through your business is what keeps it running. It’s important to pay attention to this cash flow and ensure that there are no disruptions or inconsistencies.
Keeping track of all the money going and coming can be a bit of a problem, especially with larger businesses, and this can lead to problems down the line. Payment automation systems can help solve these problems, with your produce business benefiting in (at least) eight different ways.
