If you’re on the lookout for ways to minimize costs for your business, you should be asking which business functions can be done online. This strategy won’t work for every process that needs to be streamlined, but it could apply to quite a few of them. Take paying bills, for example. The traditional method is to receive a physical bill in the mail, and cut a check for it, and make sure the check arrives by the bill’s due date. This process might not take much time if it’s only done once or twice a month, but if it’s done 10 times a day, that will eat up a lot of money in personnel costs. Plus, that doesn’t even include the cost of the envelopes, stamps, and the checks themselves.
This is why so many businesses decide to use a check service like Checkissuing. Not only does this cut down on costs, but it can also reduce errors and boost the security of your payments. Not just because they’re good at what they do, but because these types of services do a lot more than just issue paper checks. They can also set up online payments, whether they’re one-time deals or recurring monthly payments.
Whether or not you’re doing it yourself, making business payments online can save you money and boost your bottom line. Below you’ll find some helpful information, including practical tips on how to pay your business’ bills online.
Tips and tricks for lowering costs when making online business payments
There are a few different ways to make this happen, but the main one comes first: putting all your payments in one place. The fewer payment methods you use, the more time and money you’ll save.
- Manage payments from a single online platform
It isn’t enough to just switch from paper checks to online payments; it also isn’t enough to simply stick with a single payment method as much as possible. The goal is to have one online platform where you can take care of the majority of your payments. Ideally, it will integrate with your business bank accounts, as well as your accounting software. This will save massive amounts of time each month, which will translate to saving money as well. Of course, there will always be a few exceptions; smaller vendors such as the landscaping company or the cleaning lady may not be set up to accept online payments. However, once you’ve switched over the majority of your bills to the same online payment platform, you’ll start seeing the benefits almost immediately.
- Delegate bill management
A common problem for small businesses is that the owners try to take care of everything themselves. Even if you’ve handed over some responsibilities to an accounting team, you might still be holding the reins where banking matters are concerned. With secure online payment systems, you can establish unique logins for each user, and determine which tasks they can and can’t do. This lets you pass on key responsibilities, without sacrificing security.
- Set up automated payments
One common feature of top-notch online payment platforms is that you can set up recurring automated payments. Not only can you take care of most of your monthly bills from a single platform; but you can also set them on autopilot, and let them take care of themselves! It’s easy to see how this would save your business money. Even though you’d be paying for the online billing service, it would be considerably less than paying your accounting team to do the same job manually.
Benefits of making business payments online
If your business is using multiple payment methods for 30 monthly bills or more, it’s probably time to relieve some of that workload with the help of online payments. However, this doesn’t mean simply switching from physical checks to PayPal for each vendor. It means using an online payment platform that integrates with your bank account and your accounting software, letting you set up multiple payments per month, with multiple vendors, from one platform.
Switching over to this payment method can take some time, and it will also require you to coordinate with your vendors to see who’s willing to participate. That being said, the initial effort will more than pay for itself in future efficiency. Here’s what to expect if you make the switch.
- Improved security
From the bank’s end of things, online payments are made using high-end encryption, as well as security features like two-step verification. You won’t be sacrificing security by switching over to electronic payments, especially when you compare online payment systems to paper checks.
From the personnel end of things, you’ll be able to control access to financial data for each employee. Simply create login IDs for the employees who will be accessing the payment system, and set your preferred limits for each user.
- Lowered costs
As mentioned above, the process of manually issuing payments can cost a lot of money. The bigger a business grows, the more will be spent on paying bills – in addition to the bills themselves, of course. This is true even if your business already uses some online payment systems; if the payments are being made individually for each vendor, you’ll still be paying more than you should just to issue payments. By adopting a single online payment platform, you could potentially free up quite a bit of money.
- Enhanced efficiency
Time is money, as they say, and you’ll be saving both if you make business payments online. This isn’t just because your accounting team won’t be issuing each payment individually; it’s also because they won’t have to process as much data. If you use a payment system that integrates with your bank accounts and your accounting software, this will translate to easily generated reports, dialed-in cash flow, and less time wasted going back and forth between platforms.
The Takeaway
Making business payments online may take some work to set up initially, but once that’s done, you’ll be glad you took this important step in helping your business grow.
