Best Practices for Sage Intacct Payments

May 25, 2023 by Zazil Martinez

Traditional payment methods in today's complex business landscape can result in high costs, errors, and inefficiencies. However, the Paystand-Sage Intacct integration offers a game-changing solution. Optimize your business and boost its bottom line by adopting these industry-leading practices.

When organizations invest in new technology, it's critical to understand best practices to maximize ROI. Accounts receivable and invoicing are fundamental to a successful business, so these practices are crucial.

Unfortunately, payments, invoicing, and accounting workflows are often complex and have high transaction costs, errors, and inefficiencies. Sage Intacct works closely with Paystand to make B2B payments cashless, feeless, and intuitive.

Keep reading to learn how this partnership can help your business thrive through some of the best practices for excellent performance.

 

Current B2B Marketplace Landscape


It's more than evident that the world has accepted digital commerce. We purchase many items online, pay bills through portals, and move much of our daily errands to smartphones.

But that's not always the case in the B2B world. Some B2B organizations, smaller and tech-focused, are moving in that direction. Yet, larger organizations with legacy systems find digitizing their accounts receivable processes challenging.

As a result, many companies are still paying steep credit card fees, struggling with unintegrated systems, and shuffling spreadsheets and cumbersome workflows. This results in higher operating costs, more human errors, and inefficient processes.

Credit card fees alone can be an extra 3% cost for every transaction. ACH transactions take longer and are prone to mistakes, fraud, or security breaches. And worse: some companies insist on paying invoices with old-fashioned paper checks. This means more steps, such as managing incoming mail, manual processing, and depositing checks at a bank. Paper often results in misplaced payments, meaning extra work for AR professionals to track down and locate these errors.

Although many solutions are available today, it can take time to integrate them into back-end ERP systems. This means teams are stuck between spreadsheets, software, and paper reams while performing daily duties. This inefficiency decreases employee morale and the loss of smart team members who want more career challenges.

There are many opportunities to reduce cost and labor with integrated solutions like Paystand and Sage Intacct's. This partnership is reinventing hundreds of B2B companies' payment and collections processes today.

 

Sage Intacct Payments Best Practices

1. Eliminate Payment Processing Fees


Although credit cards make great sense in the consumer market, there is much less benefit in the B2B world. Costs are the same but more significant due to the transaction volume in the B2B landscape. More than 60% of businesses still accept most payments by credit card. Credit card companies charge about 3% for every transaction regardless of the customer. That can mean thousands of dollars of lost revenue for a mid-sized company.

The Paystand-Sage integration allows taking zero-fee payments through the Paystand Bank Network. This leads customers to the lowest-cost payment option by shifting transaction fees to them. If businesses choose to use credit cards, debit cards, and ACH, they can do so at wholesale rates.

 

2. Collect Payments Faster


Companies measure AR success with metrics such as Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), which reports how quickly you get paid. The higher the DSO, the more cash flow issues and bad debt an organization may face.

Customers using Paystand's Sage integration make the collection process easier for clients. This plays a significant role in speeding up how quickly they pay invoices. Easy-to-use payment links and embedded "Pay Now" buttons on invoices and emails eliminate the excuses to wait. Securing fast payment on invoices means better cash flow and fewer human errors that may occur in manual processes.

Best practices include self-service options to select and pay invoices and virtual terminals to process payments through a system dashboard.

 

3. Instant Payment Visibility


Accounts receivable often go through changes made constantly within the system. Achieving visibility with real-time data and effective reconciliation improves efficiency, accuracy, and timely customer communication.

Best practices include daily reconciliation of payments and bank transfers in real time. This includes automatically applying partial and complete payments to invoices and sales orders. Transfer reports and ledger updates are automatically received with details of deposits, transactions, invoices, and sales orders. Also, refunds, fees, discounts, disputes, and adjustments can be seen clearly in the system.

Instead of individuals moving between software, paper, and spreadsheets, Paystand-Sage's automation reduces labor costs and frustration. Reports are populated with invoice data, meaning more accurate information for decision-making. Companies can see collected and pending receivables categorized by type or status.

 

4. Increase Security


Data security is a vital tenet of any best practice discussion. The Paystand-Sage integration puts data governance and security high in managing payments and AR for a company. It uses a PCI DSS Level-1 certified payment processor, enables two-factor authentication and role-level access, and securely stores customer payment data with Fund-on-File tokenization.

Businesses can be confident their data and customers' financial information are safe and used only for making payments.

 

How Does the Paystand-Sage Intacct Integration Works


With a direct plugin for Sage Intacct, Paystand has a robust payment capability within the ERP solution. Multi-currency billing support is available as well. Here's a step-by-step explanation of how the Paystand-Sage solution works:

  1. Provide an invoice to your customer from the Sage Intacct system. The "Pay Now" button is embedded for quick and easy payments.
  2. Payers are directed to your privately labeled portal when they choose this option. Here, they are asked to select a payment method. They will be charged a 3% convenience fee if they pay with a credit card. However, Paystand's zero-fee bank-to-bank network will further encourage payment. ACH and other payment methods are available as well.
  3. The payment portal integrates into Sage Intacct for automatic deposit making, posting, and reconciling. This system incentivizes customers to use Paystand's direct bank-to-bank network. This eliminates credit card fees, postal time, lock boxes, and manual entries.
  4. For further analysis and consideration, payment information is now available in reports and dashboards.

The integration also allows scheduled payments, automatic alerts, autopay, and recurring billing options.

 

What Best Practices Mean for Customers


Companies can place receivables and revenue on autopilot to collect payments across the Paystand zero-fee bank network. This system is more efficient and easier to use than the antiquated legacy banking infrastructure. It boosts scalability, helps finance teams increase profit, and improves cash flow.

Customers can generate smart invoices with embedded payment options. This helps streamline cash flow management by automatically reconciling daily bank transfer information. Time savings generated through automated cash applications and the ability to easily reconcile deposits, refunds, disputes, fees, and adjustments add up quickly.

Getting rid of high transaction fees can save companies half the cost of receivables while increasing the speed of time-to-cash by 60%. That all results in faster scaling with growth and increased ROI.

Boost AR morale with fewer manual tasks, more fulfilling and challenging careers for team members, and better employee retention for organizations.

Advanced merchant services such as recurring billing for subscriptions, virtual terminals, and built-in fee management controls are also available for customer use.

Integrating your brand within the Paystand-Sage is simple, as checkout, interface, and payment portals can be customized. Maintenance is minimal, and the system includes fail-safes for insufficient balances. Troubleshooting support and services are available to help customers that need extra help.

Customers embracing these best practices will thrive, delving into a more flexible financial landscape. Many companies need help with antiquated, legacy infrastructures and limiting banking practices. They are stuck in unnecessary extra costs that hamper business growth.

We share these best practices to reduce operating costs, improve payment processes, and help you succeed and grow. But there's more knowledge we have for you. Download our Paystand-Sage guide and learn what this integration can do for your business.