Time is money, especially for wholesalers and distributors operating in fast-paced, high-demand industries. Managing payment processes manually can quickly become a burden, eating up valuable hours that could be better spent on growth-focused initiatives. Payment automation offers a transformative solution, not only reducing the time spent on tedious tasks but also improving accuracy, cash flow, and customer satisfaction. In this article, we’ll explore how payment automation can save your business thousands of hours per year and why it’s a must-have for any modern wholesale operation.
The Manual Payment Processing Challenge
For many wholesalers, payment processing involves a maze of spreadsheets, manual invoicing, follow-up emails, and phone calls. While these traditional methods may get the job done, they’re inefficient and prone to errors. Common manual payment challenges include:
- Invoice creation and delivery: Crafting and sending invoices individually.
- Payment tracking: Monitoring incoming payments and reconciling accounts.
- Chasing overdue invoices: Spending hours on follow-ups to collect unpaid bills.
- Data entry: Manually inputting customer and payment information, which increases the risk of errors.
- Credit applications: Vetting new customers for creditworthiness without a streamlined system.
These repetitive tasks don’t just consume time—they drain your team’s energy and productivity, leaving little room for strategic work.
How Payment Automation Transforms Your Workflow
Payment automation eliminates many of the manual processes involved in managing accounts receivable (AR). Tools like PencilPay offer a comprehensive platform to automate tasks, including invoicing, payment collection, and customer onboarding. Here are the key areas where automation can save your business time:
1. Automated Invoicing
With payment automation, invoices can be generated and sent automatically as soon as orders are processed. This eliminates the need for manual invoice creation and ensures customers receive their bills promptly.
2. Seamless Payment Collection
By enabling automated payment collection, you can eliminate the need to chase overdue invoices. PencilPay’s system allows you to set up direct debit or automated credit card payments, ensuring payments are collected on time without manual intervention.
3. Simplified Customer Onboarding
Onboarding new customers often requires collecting ABNs, credit references, and other key details. With digital credit applications, this process is fully automated. PencilPay’s platform also integrates with third-party credit bureaus to validate company information instantly.
4. Real-Time Payment Tracking
Payment automation tools provide real-time dashboards to monitor your AR status. This eliminates the need to manually reconcile accounts and track payments, saving hours of administrative work.
5. Automated Follow-Ups
Instead of sending payment reminders manually, automation systems handle this for you. PencilPay can send reminders before due dates, on due dates, and after payments become overdue—all without requiring human effort.
Quantifying the Time Savings
To put the impact of automation into perspective, let’s consider a typical scenario:
- Invoice Creation: Creating and sending invoices manually takes 5 minutes per invoice. For a business processing 500 invoices monthly, this adds up to 42 hours per month.
- Follow-Ups: Chasing overdue payments takes approximately 15 minutes per customer. For 100 overdue invoices, this equals 25 hours per month.
- Onboarding New Customers: Manually processing 20 credit applications per month at 30 minutes each consumes 10 hours.
- Payment Reconciliation: Reconciling accounts manually can take 20 hours per month.
In total, this adds up to nearly 100 hours per month spent on manual payment tasks—or 1,200 hours annually. By automating these processes, your business could reclaim the majority of this time.
Beyond Time Savings: Additional Benefits of Payment Automation
While time savings are a significant advantage, payment automation also offers other critical benefits:
- Improved Cash Flow: Automated payment collection reduces the risk of late payments, ensuring steady cash flow.
- Reduced Errors: Automation minimizes the likelihood of errors in invoicing, data entry, and payment tracking.
- Enhanced Customer Experience: Customers appreciate the convenience of automated payments and timely reminders.
- Scalability: Automation allows your business to handle increasing transaction volumes without adding headcount.
Why PencilPay is the Right Choice
PencilPay is designed specifically for wholesalers and distributors, offering tailored solutions to automate payment processes and streamline operations. From digital credit applications to automated invoicing and payment collection, PencilPay provides everything you need to optimize your AR workflow.
Conclusion
In today’s competitive landscape, time is one of your most valuable resources. By adopting payment automation, you can save thousands of hours annually, allowing your team to focus on what truly matters: growing your business. PencilPay’s comprehensive platform makes it easy to transition from manual processes to efficient, automated workflows.
Ready to reclaim your time and improve your AR process? Book a demo with PencilPay today and see how payment automation can transform your business.