What is Payment Automation?

The difference between a decent accounts payable platform and a great one lies in what AP software can do for you. The right software helps your AP teams and approvers spend less time working with the accounts payable process, giving them more flexibility to focus on other aspects of the business. With access to millions of vendors over the BILL network and more payment options—from ACH to credit card, check, and international wire transfer—you have more flexibility and control over payments. Selecting the right payment automation software for accounts payable should always involve a healthy amount of research.

Drag and drop pdf scans into BILL on your computer, or snap a picture with your mobile phone and upload it. Add as many controlled rules, roles, steps, and approval processes as you need.

How to Make Automatic Bill Payment Work for You

Successful companies need tools that can grow with them as their accounts payable workflow gets more complex. Then, the AP workflow requires a storage system, invoice approval, and payment. AP automation saves accounting professionals and finance departments a lot of hours.

And if a vendor doesn’t accept card payments, you can opt to pay via ACH. On the other hand, expenses that can vary from month to month, like utility bills or vendors, should be reviewed before payment. Since these bills fluctuate, if they jump significantly month-to-month, you’ll want to have an opportunity to review why. You can use AI software like Ramp Bill Pay to speed up that review. When choosing an online bill paying method, look for those that are free or low cost, secure, easy to use and access, and reliable. Keep your online bill paying secure by never sending account information through email, and consider using a service that incorporates a two-step verification process. Enter your monthly payments into your chosen bill pay service.

Automatic Bill Payment: What It Is And How It Works

Setting up automatic bill payments saves you precious time that you can reinvest into your business. It also prevents troublesome late payments, which can result in overdraft fees on your checking account or debit card, damage your credit score, and increase your interest rates. It’s as simple as setting up autopay to ensure your bills get paid automatically or using AI-software to check invoices for accuracy and send them for approval. Our unlimited virtual cards are great for setting up automatic recurring payments.

If not, you’ll be forced to rely on old data that’s always a few steps behind. Affiliate Partners Tap into new revenue by earning commission on each customer you refer. +1000 Integrations Connect to all your apps with out-of-the-box software integrations.

Shipping Invoice Experts Who Are On Your Side

For example, suppose you have a $300 car payment due on the 10th of every month for the next 60 months. This way, you know your payment will never be late, and you’ll avoid the trouble of doing the same task each month. If you set up the automatic bill payment through your bank or credit union’s online bill pay system, you’ll have to log in to your online or mobile banking to cancel them. Once you cancel an automatic Bill Payment Automation payment made with your bank account or credit card, it’s important to continue monitoring your account activity to make sure no new payments are processed. Making an automatic bill payment to a credit card also can be problematic if you don’t pay your credit card bill in full each month. Scheduling recurring payments for streaming services, gym memberships or utility bills may not seem like a big deal.

As a small business owner or finance team, you already have so many things to worry about day-to-day. From financial management strategies to making sure your cash flow is healthy to managing a new wave of remote employees, all of these fall on a list of priority to-do items.

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Gather all necessary documentation required to process a transaction so your accounting team never has to chase after invoices and receipts ever again. There is also the risk that comes with “out of sight, out of mind” – if you stop being hands-on with your payments you may forget precisely what you’re being billed for. For example, maybe you see a great deal on a new gym, so you sign up immediately https://www.bookstime.com/ and make a mental note to cancel your current membership and its automatic bill paying schedule. Regardless of whether you are still using your membership or not, payment will still be leaving your account until you make the effort to cancel it. So, if you have a habit of changing your services and memberships on a regular basis, automatic payment may just end up being overly complicated.