Suppose a customer enters your store, buys an item, pays for the item by swiping his credit card and walks out of the store. Doesn’t this seem to be an extremely simple process? This is, in a way, is very similar to the way in which online payments work. But when B2B businesses are concerned, things can get even more complex. There are quotes and invoices to prepare, there are multiple departments which have different guidelines and budgets. As a result, payments can take many hours of proper organization to process, particularly when transactions keep growing in size.
Are you a business which accepts B2B payments? If you answered yes, you should consider the systems which are there in place. Does your business accept credit cards and checks? Did you take into account the security concerns of accepting cards like abiding by PCI compliance? Unfortunately, if your business has a payment system that’s poorly organized, this can hold your business back from flourishing. With that in mind, here are few pain points of processing B2B payments and how you can solve them.
AUDITS
SECURITY OF DOCUMENTS
If there is a mistake with a transaction, such as a missed recurring payment or a check that bounced, it will take you several hours to go through the documentation to solve the issue. On top of that, documentation can be misplaced, damaged or even accidentally destroyed, especially if it is in paper. In such cases, it becomes even more vital to have the documentation stored in an online database. This can be a life-saver and can promote online security within a secure framework.
When you use a digital or an automated system, several employees be granted access to these folders and accounts while reducing the risks of physical documents which can get tampered with, lost or stolen.
REMITTANCE STORAGE
The documents that you might create, hold or store during the transaction or after it are called remittance information. This information is comprised of reports, invoices, receipts, numbers and contact details, as well as other identification documents. Once the transaction is completed, the invoices need to be sent off to the intended person, to the right address and most importantly, to the appropriate parties. In case something goes wrong with payment, such as the wrong bank details, wrong information of customers or entering an incorrect amount, the transaction has to be monitored. Such documents have to be found immediately. This is why digital storage is much easier to search for and is also reliable. The more tasks you can cut, the more effective and efficient the payment system of the business will be.
In a nutshell, there are several potential disadvantages that B2B businesses face while handling payments, most of which are because of the fact that they use physical documents. If you shift to digital and paperless documentation, this will alleviate the chaos of handling several B2B client payments and data at once. Even more, if you can shift to green technology, this will bid goodbye to paper receipts and make it a thing of past. You won’t even need to dig through endless paper receipts when your business faces a dispute, and you can also reduce expenses related to buying papers.
