When you’re running a business, you often have information, notes, and data scattered around your office, or worse, in your head. Implementing systems that can create seamless processes not only reduces your labor time, but it also increases your overall profitability. The automation of your customer payments with your bookkeeping is one area that can significantly impact your business’ success.
An integrated payment solution allows you to accept credit cards and other forms of digital payments, while seamlessly integrating with your accounting software, customer relationship management (CRM) platform, point of sale (POS) system, or online shopping cart! An integrated payment solution streamlines your operations, saving you both time and money. For example, an integrated payment solution automatically posts payments to unpaid invoices, helping you reconcile your general ledger with fewer errors. Further, you don’t have to enter and re-enter financial information into your various platforms, such as your CRM platform or Quickbooks.
How do integrated payment solutions benefit my business?
Let’s look at five ways integrated payment solutions can benefit your business beginning today.
They offer time and money savings.
Keeping up with customer payments, invoices, receipts, accounts receivables, and general ledgers cannot only be time-consuming, these tasks take you away from focusing on growing your business. However, the performance of these menial tasks is critical to the overall financial health of your business.
By implementing integrated payments into your business, the system will seamlessly input your customers’ payments into your accounting or CRM program, allowing you to gain valuable insights from your numbers, while laser-focusing on the growth of your business.
Additionally, an integrated payment system saves you money by reducing the time you’ll spend on administrative tasks, such as balancing your books. Your business systems all integrate automatically, allowing you to focus on better serving your customers.
They improve accuracy and financial forecasting.
By having computer systems process and reconcile payments, you’re reducing the occurrence of human error regarding your financial information. It’s all too easy to make a data entry mistake — inverting two numbers or forgetting to key in a decimal point. Or, entering different information into two or three different platforms, such as your online store or accounting program. Once your books don’t balance, it can take a significant amount of time (and a lot of frustration) trying to find and correct the error.
Integrated payment systems reduce, if not outright eliminate human error, allowing you to manage your company’s financial information more effectively. By reducing mistakes, your business can save time and money as well while helping you receive payments faster and increase your profitability.
With more accurate financial records, you can use your integrated data to your business’ benefit. For example, by combining your data, you can determine which products or services are your top sellers and which ones may be driving you into the red. Additionally, since your financial information won’t be scattered from here to there, you’ll have a better idea of what products or services deserve your focus and what ones may need to be re-imagined.
Further, you’ll make your accountant happy come tax time. No more shoeboxes filled with receipts or illegible handwritten ledgers. No more missing information or financial information filled with small mistakes. Your accountant can get a more holistic view of your business’ health, while giving you useful advice when it comes to creating a smoother tax filing season.
They provide insights into your sales and customer behaviors.
Your integrated data can help you understand your customer’s behaviors and what drives your sales. The information accumulated in your integrated payment system provides insights into previous sales while creating consistent interactions with your customers, thereby improving their overall experience. With this data at your disposal, you can more aptly target your marketing based on the analytics and metrics you receive. Imagine calling a customer when their favorite brand is re-stocked in your store or online. What a fantastic example of personalized customer engagement!
Additionally, this data can give you insight into your inventory. Understanding which products are top-sellers and which ones are crowding your storage room shelves helps you focus on creating the type of customer service you need to be profitable. Further, you can track how long certain products take to deliver, better serving your clients by keeping the right amount of inventory in your store. If you’re always out of a favorite item, your customers may start looking elsewhere for their purchases.
They improve security.
With integrated payment processing, you have more built-in security features than if you prepared your business’ financial data manually. For example, integrated payment solutions house data, such as payment information. By utilizing the cloud, you can take advantage of the numerous security protocols put into place, providing added layers of security for your business.
Additionally, when using cloud-based programs, your data is encrypted. Encryption converts your customer and financial data into code, preventing unauthorized access. Further, cloud-based servers are located off-site; so say goodbye to the administrative costs of maintaining servers at your location and backing up your data every night. With data being housed off-site, your business is also protected in case of a natural disaster, such as a lightning strike or flood. If this does occur, you won’t have to worry about file cabinets full of paper getting destroyed.
Finally, any system that processes credit cards must be PCI-compliant. Also known as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), PCI compliance requires businesses to comply with specific security standards created by the major credit card providers, such as Visa and Mastercard. PCI compliance not only keeps data secure, but it provides for rules in the case of a breach. By providing data security, you can increase your customer retention rates by letting your buyers know that you value your financial relationship.
They streamline your operations.
By integrating your business systems (such as your accounting software, CRM program, or invoices) you can better optimize your processes and procedures. Once you do, you’ll eliminate time-consuming processes like having to manually enter and reconcile data into your systems.
By integrating your services, you can focus your efforts on other areas of your business, such as providing a better client experience and improving satisfaction. By saving time (and money) on administrative tasks, you can direct your resources towards more profitable endeavors.
At North, we make setting up your new integrated payment solution, easy. We offer seamless integration, low processing fees, and risk-free, month-to-month service agreements. We help make it easy to provide your customers with the online frictionless transactions that they’ve come to expect. Finally, we integrate our systems with accounting software (like QuickBooks) allowing you to save both time and money while gaining valuable insight into your business.
Whether you’re looking to accept in-store credit card payments or online payments, we have the modern technology you need. We’ll help tailor your payment processing to your specific business while following the PCI-compliance steps, giving you peace of mind. To set up a consultation, contact us here or give us a call at 877.840.1952.
