Sage, CSI Debut New B2B Automated Pay Solution

Sage, which makes cloud business management solutions, has expanded its relationship with Corporate Spending Innovations (CSI), which provides B2B electronic payment solutions, according to CPA Practice Advisor Wednesday (March 10).

The companies are working on new vector payment capabilities within the Sage Intacct financial system, which will provide a “seamless experience from bill to reconciliation for joint customers.” The new solution is called Sage Intacct Vendor Payments powered by CSI.

The intent of the partnership is to tackle friction. The published report notes that several processes including working with automated clearing house (ACH) batches and printing and mailing checks are rife with issues, with finance teams bogged down by time-consuming and expensive problems. They end up having to work with manual processes and jumping between multiple systems.

With Sage and CSI’s technology, the businesses can streamline and automate their processes while bringing Sage’s cloud financials and CSI’s payments platform, letting customers pay quickly, getting reconciliations faster, and having numerous ways to pay.

Vendor Payments powered by CSI will offer a variety of ways to pay including ACH, printed checks and one-time virtual cards. Companies will reportedly be able to see more savings through not having to manually print checks.

In addition, the faster reconciliation will come with easier matching of invoicing to payments. That will lead to fewer errors and more visibility for companies with more access to details.

“Most companies don’t realize just how much time and money gets wasted in their traditional AP workflows,” said Dan Miller, senior vice president of product management at financial software provider Sage Intacct. “Studies have shown it can cost companies $20 or more per check to pay vendors and more than 80% of an AP team’s time is spent on manual transactions and payment processing.”

The financial software account market, on pace to be worth $19 million, has the potential to help businesses transform whole operations. Miller said the technology will help companies keep up with competitors.