However, the average SME is owed £15,370 in late payments and around 60% of small businesses report that they would go out of business if that amount reached $50,000.
To support their SME clients such as Docuflow, FHC needed a reliable way to ensure that both they and their clients could optimise their accounts receivable and credit control processes, ensuring consistent cash flow without impacting their relationship with their customers or diverting significant amounts of capital or staff time on unproductive or repetitive tasks.
Effective credit control can help businesses, especially SMEs, that struggle to get paid on time, ensuring that there are as few delays as possible when it comes to getting paid for work done. It allows companies to improve cash flow which is critical to surviving and thriving as a business.
In the case of Docuflow, the company was having trouble getting paid on time, which was restricting their ability to grow their business, and were having to divert large amounts of staff time in order to make repetitive and unsuccessful manual chasing and phone calls that damaged their client relationships without getting them the money they were owed.
Having had great success with Chaser in automating their own credit control procedures, FHC introduced Docuflow to Chaser in an effort to reduce the number of outstanding payments on their books and increase their cash flow.
As a result of FHC introducing Docuflow to Chaser, the company was able to get their invoices paid, on average, a whopping 54 days faster than they had prior to using Chaser's accounts receivables software.
The reason for such a significant reduction in days before payment is wrapped up in the wider benefits of using Chaser's accounts receivable platform.
Because Chaser is fully integrable with all commonly-used business accounting apps, such as Xero, QuickBooks, and many more the Chaser platform streamlines your entire accounts receivable process.
In addition to that, there are a number of other benefits to be enjoyed from using an automated accounts receivable system such as:
There is no need for double data entry since all financial information is recorded in real-time with two-way synchronisation between Chaser and your accounting system - so you can keep track of customers' payment history.
By implementing Chaser, you are able to create a comprehensive picture of your customer's payment behaviour - allowing for proactive measures to be taken before it's too late.
With Chaser, there is no need to spend time chasing up invoices or sending out reminders manually since email reminders can be sent automatically on pre-selected dates. This takes the pressure off from having to constantly follow up with delinquent accounts because they simply get reminded when it's their turn, and chased automatically.
Additionally, if an account falls into arrears then a faster response rate may help prevent them from becoming a lost business opportunity altogether by improving communication between yourself and customers that have fallen behind in their payments.
In doing so you have the opportunity for negotiations through which clients pay off part of the debt and re-establish their credit with you. With the ability to facilitate payment plans with chosen amounts and intervals, and chase installments automatically, customers who find it difficult to pay can be offered greater flexibility, increasing your chances of receiving payment or part-payment sooner.
The best way for Docuflow to get their clients to pay them is to offer the widest possible range of payment options in the most convenient manner. Chaser's payment portals are available on all devices, allowing customers to access their account information and make payments wherever they are.
The Chaser platform also offers the ability for clients to pay online with the usual debit card, credit card or bank transfer methods, as well as payments through Stripe.
All the required payment information is available to the client in one centralized portal, allowing businesses to help their customers stay organized, and collect what they owe faster.
The Chaser platform also makes it easy for Docuflow to find out who owes them money with real-time dashboards that show exactly which clients have paid and how much they've paid.
The Chaser platform is fully automated, so sending repeated payment reminders no longer takes staff away from more productive tasks.
Chaser helps keep track of what is owed to Docuflow, and it sends automatic payment reminders. This allows the firm to spend less time managing accounts receivable and more time doing other important things like helping clients solve problems with their document processing.
In conclusion, credit control platforms such as Chaser offer businesses like FHC and Docuflow a number of benefits including being able to automate accounts receivable processes and provide real-time information about who owes money and how much they owe.
It also helps to reduce the costs associated with recovering payments, allowing businesses to focus on growth rather than chasing debts down.
Chaser can help businesses automate their accounts receivable by enabling more efficient communication between the company and any customers that have fallen behind in their payments.
This improves payment times, reduces stress levels for staff members handling billing issues, decreases costs of collections associated with late payments, as well as improving cash flow due to faster debt recovery periods.
By choosing to partner with Chaser, businesses can make the most out of their invoicing and billing processes by improving efficiency, decreasing stress levels involved with chasing payments down, as well as reducing costs associated with late repayments.