Breaking Down The Silos In Accounts Receivable

Timing is everything for cash flow management. For a business to thrive and to manage working capital effectively, managing what is coming into the firm (and what is going out) requires a high level of visibility.

In B2B, visibility has been a hindrance so long as adherence to old ways of doing things — think paper checks — remains the norm. Late last month, Financial Transmission Network Inc. (FTNI) said it had launched the newest version of its online payment offering, dubbed ETran, which helps firms accept and reconcile credit card and ACH payments. The newest additions to the platform allow payments professionals to select invoices that are due to be paid and choose to pay them with a single-click function.

In an interview with PYMNTS, Zac Robinson, director of sales and marketing at FTNI, stated that ETran is aimed at controllers, credit management professionals and CFOs, with FTNI customers able to reconcile several types of payments “and streamline back-office functions.” The overall goal, he said, is to help “de-silo” the accounts receivable functions of a firm that may have legacy systems that work across specific payments types, such as checks, ACH or credit card.

The fact remains, said the executive, that manual processes and reconciliation can become a cost center. The “Pay Due” function, said Robinson, can enable B2B payments across large accounts and several invoices simultaneously — an advantage, he said, for firms with large payout responsibilities, such as those in insurance.

Portal users, continued Robinson, are able to capture invoices in the field, as can be advantageous for salespeople or other workers on location, snapping a picture of an invoice and sending it to be tracked within receivables functions after being scanned onto the platform.