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5 reasons why your business should embrace automated payments to vendors

If your business is still manually paying vendors, shifting to an automated system will save your business time and money almost immediately. According to studies by research firms, The Aberdeen Group and PayStream Advisors, automation can cut the cost of invoice processing by about 75%. If you are still unsure, here are five reasons why you should seriously consider making the move:

Gain time for more productive activities

A survey by mobile payment network, Dwolla, found that small and medium sized businesses spend at least 30 minutes handling each business check. This includes hand writing checks to vendors, getting sign approval, putting them in envelopes with stamps and dropping them off at a post box. Surely your business has better things to do with its time.

Lack of visibility

Manual payments prevent the accounts payable department from having visibility of the entire payment process to make well informed financial decisions. Automation will help your business stay ahead of its spend and gain greater cost control. You can even set flags on certain types of spends and behaviors making it easier to spot errors or possible instances of fraud.

Professionalize your business

Partners are impressed by the way things look and that also includes the way we handle and process payments. Many of the online payment systems make it easy to create and send professional documents including checks inexpensively. From our experience, vendors will take you more seriously too.

Avoid human errors

Automated processes not only save paper and reduce postal costs, they also increase accuracy. Many of the errors we see like paying duplicate invoices, paying invoices for goods or services which haven’t been delivered, or paying an invoice too late can result in penalties. An automated process ensures invoices can be processed and accessed from a central location, reducing confusion and the chance of error.

No IT experts required

If your reluctance to transition to automated payments is due to some underlying concern about your IT capabilities, then think again. Many of today’s payment systems do not require any IT knowledge and are incredibly easy to set up. The new generation of automated systems are also seamless, meaning vendors continue to receive checks without any setup or intervention.

Conclusion

At Melio, we understand small businesses may not have IT experts on hand. Our payment system is both intuitive and seamless, making it a preferred both by businesses and vendors. We also provide a level of flexibility that enables businesses to pay vendors in any format they require i.e you can pay your vendors by bank transfer or credit card even if they only accept a check. To get started, we encourage our clients to try our system with one of their vendors to see how smooth the process can be. For more information, please visit us at meliopayments.com

*This blog post is intended for informational purposes only and is not intended as financial advice.
**Melio does not provide legal, tax or accounting advice, and you should consult with a professional advisor before making any financial decisions.