Add Boyer ERP Connect as part of your Boyer Managed Service Plan
Earlier, we published a blog about automating AP for Business Central. Some of our readers responded that they are more interested in automating AR for Business Central because they want to get paid faster and have less boring, error-prone data entry tasks. The chief benefit to automating AR is getting paid faster — and who doesn’t want to get paid faster?
We recently attended two Microsoft conferences, Summit and Directions, and came across many Dynamics 365 Business Central users looking for — and finding — AP automation/workflow products. There were not as many looking to automate AR. Arguably, there are actually more benefits to automating AR.
Here are two quotes from our clients on the automation of sending and resending invoices:
- “This invoice statement and delivery software has been a game changer for us. It has cut our invoice processing time in half and has freed up hours in sending out statements and follow up invoices.”
- “We have been wanting the Send on Post functionality for a while. Now when we are working, the emails automatically go to our customers. We do hundreds of invoices a week so this saves us a bunch of time. We also like that we can look at the invoice dashboard to see what was sent out and by whom, and that we can also easily send it again if needed. The invoice reminders for late payments is also very helpful.
Key Steps & Benefits to Automating AR in Business Central
The first key to automating AR is getting the invoices sent electronically from within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, SL, GP or NAV. In 2023, we introduced our Invoice and Statement Delivery solution as a part of our Boyer Connect Managed Services & Support offering. With this easy-to-add extension, you can simplify the process of emailing invoices and statements. This program works only with Business Central, but there are other ways in Microsoft legacy ERPs (GP, SL and NAV) to invoice electronically.
Delivering the invoice electronically is only half of the battle — albeit an important part. Our ISD (Invoice and Statement Delivery program) also greatly facilitates resending invoices to clients who have lost their initial invoices. Some clients have stopped there and been happy with the time they’ve saved from not having to print, fold, stuff, stamp and mail invoices.
The second key of automating AR is getting paid. Allowing us to help you set up a click-and-pay type of portal makes it easier for your clients to pay you faster. Some clients will opt to pay you straight from the email and bypass the portal while others will opt to pay you using the portal. If the client agrees to pay via the portal, the system makes it easy for them to see how their payments were applied to specific invoices. More importantly for you, the system also does the payment application work for you. There’s no more manual steps to applying payments to client invoices, saving hours of time each week.
Others have gone further. These clients have said they don’t want the work of applying the payments against the invoices either. By offering a portal for a client to do this themselves, you can save the work of not having to apply the payments against the invoices. You will also free up your AR staff from having to answer as many questions about how something got applied. This is because the customers choose themselves which invoices to pay off and can see a history of their account online easily and quickly.
Clients with a high volume of transactions or short payment terms benefit greatly from this addition of a customer portal. The portal is very flexible so customers who do not want to utilize credit card payments do not have to offer that option, which allows them to avoid the additional credit card fees. Users who do not want to deal with the security issues of encrypting stored credit cards can offer this option without worry because the portal does that for you.
Below you can see sample savings using the portal we recommend:
As part of Boyer’s Managed Support & Services plans, we can help you set up your automated invoicing or emailing from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and implement the portal software. Signing up for the Foundation Plus Managed Service also gets you access to 30 other highly useful programs that enhance Business Central — from useful dashboards to tools that help you ensure your sub-modules stay in balance with your General Ledger. Additional partner software subscriptions may be needed as referenced above.
If you want more information on automating AR, AP or enhancing Business Central, contact us today.
