Optimising and protecting core business resources, in particular human, administrative and financial, are vital to the smooth running of commercial operations. It can cost businesses large amounts of capital to invest in these resources, so it’s imperative that these valuable assets are aligned to support mission critical priorities.
A notable proportion of businesses currently face many economic and organisational challenges. A recent survey conducted by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) revealed that nearly a third of businesses say cash flow and resource management are ongoing concerns.
Burdensome administration and complicated resource planning could reduce your ability to optimise cash flow or meet business objectives. In this article, we explore how you can reduce finance admin with Direct Debit payment solutions to support stronger long-term strategic growth opportunities.
Contents
- What payment collection challenges do enterprises face?
- How automated payments help streamline your business.
- Let your business thrive with payment solutions from Interbacs.
What payment collection challenges do enterprises face?
If your organisation is using multi-channel sources of receiving Bacs payments, such as websites, partners, social media and new customer sign-up portals, these could be complex to manage, report on or consolidate, presenting cost and reconciliation issues. Monitoring & amalgamating these Bacs payment sources can take up a huge amount of time and occupy a large portion of your financial team’s resources.
Manual Bacs payment processing often means that finance teams are required to input payment data, such as customer bank details, and undergo several rounds of transaction verification and validation. The manual delivery of repetitive tasks can lead to errors in the system, which may cause costly delays through payment rejection.
Plus, the checking and actioning of Bacs reports when completed manually can become convoluted with the chance of mistakes, missed payments, erroneous processing or poor customer communications.
How automated payments help streamline your business
The automation of Direct Debit payments can help to transform your processing system due to the fact that you can schedule payments in advance, pre-configure report automation or emails, and use one single source of file submission from multiple channels/sources. This helps to create more predictable cash flow, enhanced customer relationships and trust, helping to support transparency across your financial streams and stronger financial planning as well as reporting.
Bacs payment automation can also help your business with:
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Reduced administration
The opportunity for error is noticeably higher when Direct Debit payments are processed manually or disparately. Bacs automation removes the need for teams to input data, mitigating human error, and complete many validation checks, creating time and cost savings.
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Regulated payments
When processes are not automated, then missing or late payments can go unaddressed. Bacs automation enables payments to be collected automatically on their approved due date, minimising the possibility of payments not being completed correctly.
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Increased efficiency
Streamlining your financial processes, automation of Bacs payments allows your business to automatically manage and collect payments without taking time away from key business priorities.
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Enhanced insights
Access to Bacs payment reports, with the option of automating the subsequent actions, provides valuable financial insights into cash flow patterning to support clearer and more strategic financial planning for the near and longer term.
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Improved security
Bacs-approved software ensures a robust level of protection through various methods, like data encryption and file validation. This supports a lower level of admin effort and internal resource planning, as a data breach or cyber attack may result in a sudden halt to business activity and significantly impact financial streams.
In fact, using Direct Debit Management Software (DDMS) and Hardware Security Models (HSM) can completely automate your Bacs payment processing.
Principally, these solutions provide a pre-programmed level of validation and approval so that processing doesn’t include human intervention, resulting in time savings and the reduction of human error.
DDMS and HSM tools can also help businesses to rectify unpaid Direct Debit issues and action bank account changes so that blockages in the payment processing system can be rapidly resolved.
Another major advantage is that Bacs reports can be digitised to support transparent reconciliation, which enables more resilient, consistent and efficient payment processing across your organisation.
Let your business thrive with Bacs payment solutions from Interbacs
Optimising payments for operational excellence, Bacs payment solutions from Interbacs empower your business to take control over your finances so you can access every valuable growth opportunity.
Interbacs offers market-leading Direct Debit solutions. As one of the first Bacs Solution Suppliers in the UK, our customers know that we deliver first-class Direct Debit systems.
We have a range of products and services that help manage your cash flow, from our Bacs Approved Bureau to our InterPay Bacs payment software. Plus, our DDMS software makes signing up new customers a quick, easy and streamlined process.
Browse our complete collection of Direct Debit solutions and find the perfect product to better support your business and your customers.
