NetSuite: Improving cash flow with AP and AR Automation

“Never take your eyes off the cash flow because it’s the life blood of business.”, this quote by Richard Branson really gives the importance of cash flow management in a business. Every business, whether small or big, requires cash to start, run and grow. From buying raw materials, to paying recurring day to day expenses, the business has to manage both cash inflow and outflow. And as the business expands, it becomes a challenge for the management to have an effective control and deep insights of the cash flow. But the new NetSuite Banking comes with the ability to give the users with greater cash flow control and a clear insight into the cash flow requirements of the business.

Oracle NetSuite banking has enabled automation for accounts receivable and accounts payable, which has made it easy for the company to send invoices and pay bills at a faster rate. Not only this, NetSuite has partnered with one of the largest financial institutions in the world, HSBC, that benefits the users to have a greater flexibility on how to send or receive payments, as they now have access to a global digital wallet within the existing NetSuite software.

• But why is automation important?

As the size of business grows, routine accounting processes become lengthy and can include a large number of data entries. These entries when entered manually can take several hours, which decreases the efficiency of the employee and increases the risk of accounting errors like double entry, errors of omission, etc. So, the books needed to be checked on a regular basis and the time in identifying and then rectifying those errors can add cost to the business. Also, the management won’t be able to get the actual and updated cash flow information as there might be some chances of errors. So, managing the cash requirements of a business can be a huge challenge.

Not just this, when accounting processes are carried on manually, it increases the cost of business. The employees get indulged in performing repetitive tasks, that might lead to omission in bills of vendors. This can result in huge losses for the business as the omitted bill might contain goods/ services worth thousands. This ultimately leads to inaccurate financial information and the management gets wrapped up with bad decisions that were due to faulty financial predictions. 

 Here are some of the cash flow processes, that NetSuite Banking can help businesses with:

• Accounts Payable: The Oracle NetSuite Banking includes the ability of automated scanning of invoices, three-way invoice comparison and matching and automated outbound payments. The users can select a different payment mode for a different vendor. They can also choose those methods that can be the fastest payment method or that method that costs least to the business. This helps in having a regular check on the due dates and the amount that will be paid at a particular period of time.

• Account Receivable: NetSuite’s payment link feature has helped businesses in receiving the sales outstanding at a faster and smooth way. The customers can pay using the payment link of the company, and other modes such as debit/credit card, online transfers, etc. Also, the NetSuite Banking software provides the users with features such as automatic reminders, invoice creation, etc.

• Smooth International Payments: As the company using NetSuite Banking is awarded with an international digital wallet which can be used in more than 60 countries of the world, it gives the business a wide angle of flexibility to expand its branches in many countries. It doesn’t have to collaborate with country specific payment providers or open multiple international bank accounts. The management can focus on expansion and growth of business.

• Managing employees’ expense: The NetSuite also provides the companies the ability to manage employees’ expenses from web or mobile apps, which makes the report more reliable, efficient, accurate and fast. Not just this, a virtual credit card is also provided to the NetSuite banking subscribers, that can be used in making payments to employees and vendors. The virtual credit card also provides the company’s customers with cashbacks if they pay using it. 

• Eliminate omission of transactions: The NetSuite Banking users can replace all the time-consuming tasks with automation that reduces the chances of omission of transactions. Also, it can automatically tally all the entries with bank entries, which assures no transaction has been omitted. Thus, the financial statements will depict the true and actual position of the company.

So, automation surely has a lot of benefits and can help the business focus on more important aspects than just deploying the employees to do the manual work that NetSuite Banking can do for them. Therefore, the goal of companies to make business management more effective and smooth can be achieved using NetSuite.

Here’s a link to our latest blog article https://continuityerp.com/resource/automatically-connecting-inventory-and-order-data-is-key-to-omnichannel-commerce-success/