Your business relies on its income. And sometimes your income can slow down or fall short. And when this happens, there is a chance you will miss paying your bills and costs for the month. So here are some easy ways you can speed up payment processing at your SMB.
Switch to Electronic Alternatives
Almost everything is done these days electronically. And payments are one of the biggest. Yet you may still lag behind in some systems. For example, you are waiting days or even weeks for payments to come through because you still use paper invoicing. Well, electronic systems can speed up your income a lot. You can use excellent apps such as Reckon or even Quickbooks to send digital invoices to customers. And you can also be open to accepting digital payments.
Choose the Right Service
Your payment processor service can be slower than others. And not all are made equally. Some less reputable ones might share data and even steal money. So although one service might be cheaper than another, with fewer service charges. There might be a reason why. To be safe and faster, it’s best that you stick to using well-known digital online payment processors. Some of the best for small businesses include RazorPay, which is actually free, and Stripe and Square. Â
Speed Up Payment Processing with Automation
There’s no end to AI these days. And one of the best ways simple yet effective AI can help your business is with automation. Automation takes care of boring tasks that you need to repeat. And more importantly, tasks that you would usually need to pay someone for doing. With automation, though, this cost is vastly reduced. For example, you can set your tools to send out reminders or follow-up emails to customers that have not yet paid you for a service or product.
Reward Early Payments
You can make your bank balance and your costumes happy by rewarding them. People like to get things for free or discounts on services. So you can help ensure clients pay you on time or even earlier than usual by offering them a reason to do so. For instance, you can offer a 10% discount for early payment of a product. On the other hand, you can also come up with a system that penalizes customers for paying late, such as an administration or service charge for letters.
Be Flexible with Pay Plans
Of course, not everyone that misses a payment does so on purpose. And some customers might be in genuine money trouble. So you must be sympathetic to this. One great way to come to an understanding is to offer flexible payment plans. As long as you are being paid, it doesn’t really matter how much. Just so long as it is affordable to your customer since 33% of Americans admit to missing regular payments because of money trouble last year alone.
Summary
Your business needs money coming in. But it can trickle down sometimes. Yet you can speed up payment processing with apps, automation, and offering flexible payments to customers.
