Late payments can be detrimental to your business goals, and unfortunately, it's a common issue that affects all businesses. According to a playbook published on PYMNTS, AROUND 93% of businesses experience late payments. Various factors can contribute to invoice payment delays, such as the industry, payment terms, geographical location, and economic factors. It typically takes around 20 days to resolve a disputed invoice, according to a study by PayStream Advisors.
While the impact of late payments may be insignificant when your business is smaller, it can have a ripple effect as your business grows. To avoid this, it's crucial to have a reliable tool to streamline your collections process, proactively identify late invoices, and take corrective action.
In today's unpredictable market, financial experts are struggling to maintain a positive cash flow. This is where a tool that goes beyond automating reminder emails can make a difference. You need a flexible tool that can handle any number of invoices as your business scales and streamline your collections process efficiently.
Growfin's purpose-built software is designed to help businesses collect cash faster, with a 33% improvement rate. It enables you to create proactive collections plans and handle disputes more effectively. Our latest product updates make the tool more efficient and customizable to suit your business's unique needs. Read along to know more about our latest updates!
Dispute workflow improvements - Track, export and perform actions/ bulk actions on disputes from one place
According to a study by PayStream Advisors, an average of 12% of invoices get stuck in disputes across industries. Disputes are one of the major reasons for delays in receiving payments.
Previously, businesses could monitor disputed invoices through the Activity Trail of each invoice, but the latest version of Growfin provides an additional advantage to AR managers. The updated version includes a separate section dedicated to disputed invoices, making it easier to view all disputes in one place.
Furthermore, the AR manager can now access an overview of all current open disputes, including who is handling them, the status of each dispute, and the actions taken to resolve them. This feature enhances the accountability of the collectors and enables the AR manager to monitor the collection agents' performance more effectively. AR managers can now filter, respond, and take bulk actions, all from one place.
Streamlined configuration of dispute types
During the dispute resolution process, collectors assign a term to each invoice depending on the dispute type. However, this often leads to the creation of multiple categories, making it difficult to collate data effectively. For example, one collector might term an error in invoice billing as a "billing error," while another might describe it as an "incorrect pricing" issue.
To mitigate this issue, the latest features added to Growfin allow administrators to create major dispute categories that collectors can use to sort invoices. For instance, all pricing and billing-related disputes can be grouped under the "Pricing-related issues'' category.
This approach provides more clarity on the types of disputes prevalent in the collections process. Collectors can only categorize disputes under the predefined categories created by the admin or AR manager. However, this approach is not overly restrictive. To offer greater flexibility, admins can grant permission to other team members to create dispute categories based on their team and the nature of their disputes.
More granular control over creating AR buckets
In the previous version, the aging buckets in Growfin tool were pre-defined as 0-30 days, 30-60 days, 60-90 days, and 90-120 days, with all invoices over 120 days grouped together. However, recognizing that different businesses have varying collections practices and that customer payment behaviors can differ significantly, the latest product feature update aims to offer greater flexibility for AR managers.
With the new update, AR managers can create aging buckets based on their billing cycle, customer payment behavior, and business type. For example, a manufacturing company may require larger payment buckets than a SaaS company. This update enables businesses with customers that have longer payment cycles to take a more granular approach. By creating customized buckets, businesses can optimize their collections activities based on the specific buckets, rather than adapting their practices to fit predefined categories.
