Integrated Payments Strengthen Businesses
Accepting credit cards is essential to running a healthy and successful business in today’s world. Consumers want to pay in many ways and most of them prefer to pay by credit card according to a recent study. But receiving simple and affordable payment processing can be a challenge.
Many merchants are straddled with different systems and accepting multiple forms of payment can be cumbersome, requiring workers to manually reconcile invoices, enter transactions into multiple platforms, and update accounting systems. All these actions drain valuable time and resources and leave merchants open to errors that could cost them a lot in fines.
What are Integrated Payments?
The best way to overcome these obstacles and provide a seamless user experience is to take advantage of integrated payments. But what does that mean?
Integrated payments automate payment acceptance and allow merchants to accept credit cards directly within their existing ERP or accounting software, CRM system, or online shopping cart. The integrations automatically post payments to the invoices at the time of sale, alleviating the need to reconcile invoices or balance the finances at the end of each workday.
How Integrated Payments Improve Processes
Below are two sets of steps that compare how a payment is accepted in a non-integrated versus integrated process environment.
Here’s how a credit card transaction works without an integrated payment system:
- Merchant receives a customer’s order over the phone or online.
- The merchant then enters the customer’s credit card number into their terminal.
- The merchant saves the transaction receipt, prints out an invoice, and staples the two together. (Repeat this process for every invoice.)
- At the end of the day, the merchant matches paper invoices to electronic invoices and applies payments to the proper invoices.
- Finally, the merchant manually adjusts the accounts receivable and general ledger to reflect payment.
Now here’s the same process using an integrated payment system:
- Merchant receives a customer’s order over the phone, online, in person, or over a mobile device.
- The system enters the customer credit card number directly into the merchant’s accounting software.
- The merchant utilizes the integration to process the payment.
How Integrated Payments Help Merchants Run Their Business
Save Merchants Time – An integrated payment system streamlines the finances and frees up time for merchants and their employees to concentrate on other important parts of the business.
Increases Cash Flow – Integrated payments allow merchants to get paid as soon as possible, making it easier to manage finances and improve cash flow.
Reduces Human Errors – Integrated payments help relieve the stress of manual accounting and make it easier for businesses to manage finances without human errors and double data entry.
Strengthen Security – Integrated payments give businesses the opportunity to take advantage of cloud-based accounting, which provides a more secure way of managing finances.
Learn More About Our Integrated Payments:
Contact us online or call 1-800-621-8931.
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