Mobile B2B, With ONE (UP) App To Rule Them All

The movement toward mobile payments means big changes are on the horizon for small businesses. In an age where speed and convenience are becoming key considerations for companies of all sizes as they transact across the supply chain, the fact that payments are still being carried out across paper checks, credit cards and ACH payments is proving limiting to cash flow planning and possibly even business growth.

The advent of the cloud as a repository for data and as a way to track fund flows across operations that may be far-flung has freed up payments from being relegated to the desktop, with the added benefits of real-time transactions and digital records.

One firm that has extended its reach across the cloud and multiple business functions in the B2B realm is ONE UP, which operates out of Paris and the U.S. and has 335,000 customers across more than 50 countries.

In the middle of last year, the company launched its flagship mobile accounting suite, which enables the automation of accounting functions for small businesses and cuts across several points of day-to-day business and financial activity. The ONE UP suite’s functions geared toward inventory management allow for records tied to inventory to be reconciled into ONE UP Accounting. In addition, the back-office functions, usually the purview of accountants, can be done remotely, and they can audit the books or export financial data on the fly.

It is this mobility that the company sees as an emerging, long-term trend. In an interview with PYMNTS, ONE UP Chief Executive Officer Francois Nadal said that the 335,000 businesses that are using the app are moving toward mobile activity to keep business streamlined and are also embracing the cloud to do so.

Nadal stated that SMEs are “relying on mobile devices to process payments,” and this, in part, has led to the recently announced partnership with PayStand, in which online payment functionality has been added to the suite, with a focus on making B2B payments more manageable and firm-wide activity easier to track.

“Mobile is key,” said Nadal, referring to payments, “and it is a way to optimize business and not just rely on a credit card.” It offers the ability to make payments directly through bank information and with a one-touch function, which proves especially useful in an international setting. Though industries that are using the app tend to vary depending on the country in which it is used, within the United States, said Nadal, the SMB roster seems, thus far, evenly split between service-oriented companies and companies that sell tangible products and tend to have less than $1 million in revenues and between 10 to 20 employees.

With such limited resources in hand, given the small size of these enterprises, added Travis Ames, vice president and product manager at the company, CRM, inventory and payments automation becomes, through ONE UP, “all in one … with one-touch inventory management, from purchase orders and beyond.” The invoicing function through ONE UP allows for quotes to be turned into invoices or sales orders, the executive said, and inventory levels are tracked as well at the point of sale (and can be done so using Square Register). In the end, said Nadal, mobile functionality, with full connections to banks, can help “automate 95 percent of the accounting functions” in a firm.