With forward-thinking companies readily embracing digital transformation to simplify and optimize their operations, the global business landscape has undergone some substantial changes. Digital transformation has launched the fintech market into a 112.5 billion dollar industry and it is only projected to grow in the future. It is vital that business leaders keep up with the growing fintech trends to stay competitive and expand their organization.

As a financial manager you must make it a priority for your team to leverage disruptive fintech solutions to stay ahead of the curve. Finance departments who have digitized their operations have discovered numerous benefits such as significant cost and time savings, increased accuracy, and a reduced risk of fraud.

Organize financial procedures with a cloud-based ERP

A cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP), like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain, is a popular starting point for a digital transformation. It ties all departments together by unifying information, data, and workflow management. Implementing an ERP will allow your company to centralize and analyze all the information in the system, increasing visibility and simplifying procedures.

Streamline your AR payment process in a centralized environment

An enterprise resource planning system gives your finance team the ability to digitize some financial procedures. However, it does not include advanced features, like the power to fully automate your accounts receivable operations. As your company expands, standard ERP platforms are often not enough to handle an increase in the volume of AR payments. To automate these procedures, your finance department needs to look for embedded AR Automation solutions designed to grow with your business. Companies that opt for built-in modules rather than bolt-on have discovered a more unified platform and true end-to-end automation without a hassle. Bolt-on solutions can lead to complex payment infrastructures that result in costly errors, unorganized data, customer dissatisfaction, and ultimately revenue loss. Digitizing these processes in one system through built-in automation will increase visibility across your whole finance team making it simple to manage the financial health of your organization.

Advantages of fully automating your AR Processes:

As a financial manager you understand that tracking accounts receivable is vital for computing your profitability and providing an accurate measure of your business’s income. It is important to have an efficient and organized procedure for your AR operations. Automation is the best way to do this. Tedious accounts receivable tasks like sending out invoices, payment reminder emails, processing customer payments, and invoice settlement can easily be automated and centralized within your ERP. With this in mind, let’s further explore the benefits of AR Automation:

1. Improve customer satisfaction

Digitizing your accounts receivable processes has a direct impact on your clients’ experience and your company’s brand. According to a report from PYMNTS, 70% of Chief Financial Officer’s stated that automating AR functions is vital to building lifetime customer value. A natural component of AR Automation is giving your customer the capabilities to view and manage their payments at any time through a self-service payment portal. Customers do not want the inconvenience of only being able to access customer service or manage their accounts during your office hours. Providing a customer-facing portal enhances the customer experience through giving them the capabilities to access their invoices and manage their payments whenever they want. A self-service payment portal truly gives the customer control in the accounts receivable procedure by streamlining it for all parties involved.

While there are significant benefits of implementing a customer-facing payment portal, it is not always the best fit for every finance team. If this is the case for your finance department another option, you should explore is an AR Cash Application solution. Automating the payment matching process is another effective way to improve customer satisfaction through eliminating payment errors and heightening security.

2. Achieve greater AR efficiency while lowering costs

Removing redundant manual work is an excellent way to cut expenses and increase productivity. AR Automation removes the busy work behind payment to invoice matching, credit card processing, and online bill presentment further simplifying and optimizing your collection process. According to a report from PYMNTS conducted on companies that deployed AR Automation, 87% reported faster processing speeds and 72% said it reduced operating costs. Discovering these time and money savings will allow your department to focus on more value-added activities and give you the ability to better allocate your budget.

3. Timely insights into the health of your AR operations

As a financial manager you know firsthand that it is imperative to maintain accurate forecasts through managing and interpreting data. Manual AR methods result in slow payment processing times putting a time constraint on when you can access the collections data. Efficiency improvements within your AR payment management operations will allow for more timely insights. Leveraging advanced built-in AR payment processing solutions, like SKsoft’s, gives you the capability to centralize collection information, improving data accuracy, and accessibility.

4. Increase cash flow

As a finance leader, you understand how cash flow management is vital to the success of your organization. Implementing an advanced AR Automation solution leads to faster payment processing times and quicker preauthorization of sales charges before order completion. As a result, your company will see an increase in cash flow. Additionally, providing the customer with the ability to easily view and manage their payment through a self-service payment portal will motivate them to pay faster.

5. Achieve a higher level of security

Opting for fully PCI-Compliant AR Automation ensures that your organization remains aligned with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, preventing legal issues and hefty fines. Penalties for a PCI-Compliant security breach can be up to $500,000 per incident. In addition, all individuals whose information may have been exposed must be contacted, which damages your company’s reputation. SKsoft Credit Card Processing solution module maintains a high level of security with features like PayLink, which can significantly reduce your PCI-Compliance scope.

Considering all the benefits, is your finance team ready to embrace AR Automation? Contact SKsoft today or join one of our weekly live demonstrations to receive an overview of our embedded financial automation modules for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain.

In today’s fast-paced environment, it is becoming more evident that adding software to automate business processes is fundamental to the success of an organization. According to a 2022 report from Imaginovation Insider, 66% of companies have added automation to their processes in one or more business functions. With automation becoming increasingly popular, using manual processes puts your company at risk of falling behind the competition.

An excellent place to start your digital transformation is with tedious financial operations. If your finance team is manually applying accounts receivable (AR) payments to the corresponding customer invoices, an automatic AR cash application solution is the perfect fit for your organization.

What does an AR Cash Application solution do?

An advanced AR Cash Application solution will process lockbox files and other types of customer payment files, seamlessly matching payments to the correct customer invoice, account, and remittance information. If your business receives large quantities of high-volume cash receipts the process of manually matching the files to customer invoices is expensive, inefficient, error-prone, and an overall security risk.

10 ways that AR Cash Application Automation can benefit your business:

In a report from PYMNTS.com, 74% of accounting teams reported that problems arose when manually processing invoice information. On the contrary, 60% of businesses that automated invoice and expense management reported a decrease in misplaced invoice cases. With these statistics in mind, let’s take a deeper dive into the advantages of automating your AR Cash Application process:

1. Fewer Mistakes

Manually matching your accounts receivable payments to the correct invoice can lead to time-consuming errors and customer dissatisfaction. Utilizing automation instead prevents some of the common inaccuracies such as decoupled remittances, incorrect discount terms, and missing characters from invoices.

2. Time Savings

Advanced Cash Application solutions will require zero additional data entry to match payments, significantly increasing your accounting team’s efficiency. According to a recent report from PYMNTS.com, among the companies that have deployed AR automation 87% reported faster processing speeds and 79% said it improved the AR team’s efficiency.

3. Improve Cash Flow

Giving your accounting team the ability to match payments more efficiently will increase your cash flow. To rightfully use the money from the customer your accounting department must first validate and associate the payment to the invoice. The quicker payments are matched to invoices, the faster your company can use the funds for other expenses giving your business more agility in uncertain times.

4. Reduce Operating Costs

Due to the excessive amount of time it takes your accounting team to correctly match payments to invoices, the cost of manually processing invoices is significant. Not to mention if an error is made,the length of time it takes to correct this mistake raises costs substantially.

5. Greater Visibility

Automating your AR processes with a solution that is built directly into your ERP, like SKsoft AR Cash Application module, makes it easy for your business to maintain accurate records of your financial affairs in real-time. Posting on-time and precise cash statements will give your financial executives improved visibility on cash inflows.

6. Ability to Scale as your Business Grows

Manually matching payments to invoices prohibits your company’s growth. Your business may be able to get away with manual cash application now, but as you grow so will your sales volume. Naturally, an increase in sales will cause the number of invoices you receive to rise. Manually matching high volumes of payments to invoices will be increasingly more expensive as your organization develops. For these reasons, it is important to implement an automated solution that is designed to grow with your business.

7. Better Customer Service

If you are receiving customer complaints about mistakes in your cash application procedures, the time for your business to upgrade to a more efficient automated process is overdue. Common payment mistakes like missing discounts or invoicing a customer who has already paid can decrease customer satisfaction and damage your business’s reputation.

8. Centralized Financial Processes within your ERP

Our AR Cash Application module is built-into your Microsoft Dynamics 365 environment, keeping all your accounts receivable data in one centralized system. Consolidating your banking and treasury functions into one platform keeps your accounting and finance teams better informed and organized.

9. Increased Support for your Finance Team

Providing your accounting department with the tools to effortlessly match payments to the correct customer invoices will allow them to focus on more value-added activities. In an article from Business Insider, 49% of office employees reported that they were unable to leave the workplace on time because of the hassle of everyday administrative tasks. Redundant manual entry tasks, like AR payment matching, lead to wasted employee hours and can be easily substituted for more efficient automated options.

10. More Secure

A secure built-in solution like SKsoft significantly reduces the risk of internal check fraud. Through decreasing the amount of staff exposed to payment information, automating your cash application process heightens security.

Fully Automate your AR Processes within Microsoft Dynamics 365

Through robust technology embedded into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, our AR Cash Application module requires zero additional data entry to match payments or process direct debit file transmission to the bank. Additionally, your business can automatically import payment files from any number of banks and bank accounts. Our module will seamlessly process, map, and apply incoming payments to the correct customer invoice all within your D365 environment.

We guarantee the coverage of any bank, and any bank specific file format, required to automate your accounts receivable process. Our solution also includes ongoing maintenance across any bank integration type such as BAI2, EDI820, NAI, Symcor, and many more.

For more information on how our AR Cash Application Solution can help your business, contact us today.

How Supply Chain Financing Benefits Both Suppliers and Buyers

With its direct impact on company success, customer satisfaction, and vendor relationships supply chain management plays a vital part in most businesses. According to a 2021 report, 70% of businesses believe that supply chains are a key driver for quality customer service. With this in mind, it is important to have an efficient financing method to prevent potential supply chain disruptions that can be detrimental to the success of your business.

If you have a higher credit rating than your supplier, implementing a supply chain financing solution (also known as reverse factoring), can be an excellent way to strengthen your organization’s financial process. Leveraging this type of technology helps eliminate the negative effects of longer payment terms through allowing your vendor to receive a timely payment without putting pressure on your business. This advantage truly makes supply chain financing a win-win situation for all parties involved.

Benefits for Buyers

With the supply chain financing solution being initiated by the buyers, we understand that you will want to ensure that you are making a profitable investment for your organization. A supply chain financing solution can benefit your business in the following ways:

Improve working capital

A reverse factoring solution helps prevent your working capital from getting stuck in your supply chain. Utilizing a third-party finance provider helps keep your operations running smoothly by delivering efficient access to financing.

Reduce supply chain disruption risks

Providing your suppliers with convenient financing allows you to reduce the risk of potential issues in your supply chain. A 2022 article from the New York Times predicts it will be unlikely for businesses to have no disruptions within their supply chain. Unfortunately, this fact will not change over time. Combating these problems with financing technology is an effective way to help strengthen your supply chain disruption plan and prevent these drawbacks from occurring.

Foster business development

Supply chain finance will allow your business to better adapt to unexpected demand surges. Without the proper financing assistance from the intermediary, it can be difficult for your vendor to accommodate sudden order quantity changes.

Easy bookkeeping

An efficient supply chain financing solution, like SKsoft’s Supply Chain Financing Module, will keep the payable on the record with the original vendor during the initial invoice term. On the due date, the original vendor’s invoice is resolved and the liability is shifted to the SCF provider for immediate payment. If your business has multiple invoices with the same due date, the payments to the SCF provider can be grouped by currency alone or by vendor and currency.

In addition, SKsoft’s supply chain financing module is embedded in your Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP, keeping all your supply chain financing invoices in one centralized system. This makes it simple for your organization to track accurate records of your financial affairs in real time.

Develop a stronger relationship with suppliers

Considering all the vendor benefits that come with adding supply chain financing technology, your supplier will likely be thrilled that you are implementing a reverse factoring solution. Fostering a strong relationship with your supplier may give your procurement team an advantage when negotiating contracts.

Benefits for Suppliers

When a problem arises on your vendor’s side, it negatively impacts your whole supply chain. With this in mind, you will want to make a decision that is not only profitable for your business but is also advantageous to your supplier. Adding a reverse factoring solution to your financial process offers the following benefits to your vendor:

Receive payments earlier

If your vendor agrees to a supply chain financing solution, they will receive their payment much faster. Typically, invoices have a 30-to-60-day turnaround, leading the supplier’s funds to be held up in received products. This can be a huge inconvenience to your supplier, especially if you habitually pay right at the deadline.

Optimize cash flow

With reverse factoring, the financing intermediary will pay your supplier early, allowing them to maintain a healthy cash flow without putting a strain on your business. When the due date approaches, your business pays the third-party finance provider.

Improved cash flow forecasting

The timing of payments is more predictable when using a reverse factoring solution. Providing your vendor with the tool to have greater visibility over their cash flow will allow them to make better educated business decisions.

Increase working capital

With a reverse factoring solution being organized and funded by the buyer, your vendor does not finance through their own working capital. Additionally, receiving early payments will allow your supplier to reduce their days sales outstanding, leading to further working capital gains.

Lower interest rate

Due to fees being based off your business’s credit rating and not your suppliers, the interest rate will be significantly lower when compared to other forms of financing. Lowering financing expenses for your vendor will grant them the ability to better invest the funds saved.

Supply Chain Financing with SKsoft

Whether you’re coming from the buyer’s or vendor’s perspective, supply chain financing is beneficial to all companies involved. Efficient supply chain modules, like SKsoft, work to automate your communications with your supply chain finance providers. Our reverse factoring solution is directly embedded into your Microsoft Dynamics 365 environment to streamline and support the entire supply chain financing process.

If you’re considering a reverse factoring solution, we would enjoy discussing the next step with your business. Contact us today sales@sksoft.com.

Finding ways to streamline your financial operations is more important than ever. Luckily, the use of advanced solutions and evolving technology is growing across industries, which can make optimization significantly easier. If your business works with multiple legal entities, a multi-company EFT might be the capable solution you need to save valuable time, money and effort.

Read on to learn more about how multi-company EFTs for Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help your business simplify some of your most arduous financial processes.

Implementing multi-company EFTs

Over the years, the Treasury Automation Suite within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations has offered the functionality for automating vendor payments and direct debits — as well as streamlining the creation and communication of those payment files to the bank. This solution has been a vital feature for businesses, considering at least 66% of organizations have started to automate processes in at least one or more business functions, per a report from McKinsey.

However, the Treasury Automation Suite was missing a key aspect for businesses with multiple legal entities. Previously, these financial processes had to be done per legal entity, which involved creating and sending multiple payment files. This is inevitably expensive, time-consuming, tedious and error-prone.

Now, the Treasury Automation Suite’s Multi-Company electronic funds transfer (EFT) can help eliminate the need for this monotonous process. With advanced solutions and robust technology in place, the module provides a means of combining payments initiated from multiple legal entities into a single file going to the bank. Additionally, this upgraded system fully automates the management of response files that are sent back from the bank — effectively streamlining this procedure significantly.

Built into Microsoft Dynamics 365

To simplify this process even further, our Multi-Company EFT solution is seamlessly embedded into your Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP system. This upgraded module is a valuable way to keep all of your financial operations in one accessible location, making it easier for your business to:

Effortlessly maintain accurate records.
Centralize your file transfer process.
Provide greater visibility for your finance team.

Supports any file format

When working with multiple legal entities, you need robust solutions that are equipped to handle multiple file formats. This efficient Multi-Company EFT upgrade is well-adept to support any file format you utilize with secure automation. This highly functional module is designed to support any file format around the globe such as ACH, BAI2, BTRS, and more.

Reduce transfer costs

If your organization works with multiple legal entities or financial institutions, there is typically a “per file” charge from banks on each file transmission. These costs are seemingly inconsequential at first glance, however, when you review your annual expenditure, these fees add up considerably! With a Multi-Company EFT at your disposal, your organization can eliminate these charges — allowing your team to better allocate these unnecessary file transfer expenses.

Key features and benefits

This robust solution not only offers key features that your organization can leverage moving forward, but also provides a host of valuable advantages as a result. The pivotal features and benefits of a Multi-Company EFT module include:

The ability to combine vendor EFT payment journals, or customer direct debit journals, from multiple legal entities into a single file for transmission to the bank.
Cost savings on “per file” charges from the bank.
Allowing process owners of vendor payment and direct debit operations to be kept per legal entity.
Centralizing and simplifying the administration of creating and sending combined files for separate legal entities.
Validation functionally, to ensure only compatible payment types are combined.
Working within the confines of any bank format where the financial institution supports multiple accounts in one file.
Offering field validation of payment content to be done at the legal entity level — which allows process owners in those legal entities to correct exceptions.
Automatically handling response files that are being returned from the bank.

Optimize your financial operations with SKsoft

The Treasury Automation Suite from SKsoft exists to empower your finance teams and optimize your systems in the process. Considering 50% of business leaders claim they’re planning on accelerating the automation of repetitive tasks within their organization, per a report from the World Economic Forum, this automation will also be a necessity to keep pace with competition moving forward.

With our Multi-Company EFT solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365, your business can improve efficiency, eliminate the need for repetitive, error-prone tasks, and simplify your financial operations as a whole. Quickly optimize some of your most burdensome and unnecessary financial activities with SKsoft’s embedded solution today!

For more information on how SKsoft can help you intelligently streamline your financial systems, contact us today.

Implementing advanced software from SKsoft is an effective way to manage and streamline your financial processes — specifically through the Treasury Automation Suite for Microsoft Dynamics 365. This includes your procedures for customer reimbursement. We’re taking a closer look into the reimbursement process and how the latest version of software available is mitigating challenges and complexity to ensure a more efficient system.

Customer Reimbursement

The reimbursement process originally involved removing the credit balance for the customer account and creating a balance due for the vendor account that corresponds to the customer. While this was a sufficient option to reimburse customers within Microsoft Dynamics 365, enhanced software and solutions from SKsoft exist to simplify this process even further.

The main issue found was Microsoft Dynamics 365 customers wanted to avoid the hassle of setting up and maintaining vendor bank accounts to simply reimburse a customer. SKsoft version 11 aims to help customers bypass these unnecessary steps to optimize their reimbursement systems.

Upgrading Your Process With Advanced Solutions in Microsoft Dynamics 365

The original procedure only supported customer reimbursement through the accounts payable process — which required both the customer and the vendor to be set up, with bank accounts maintained on both ends. This means if a customer changed their bank account information, it would be necessary to maintain that on the vendor side while pushing invoices or reimbursements from accounts receivable to accounts payable.

Advancements in SKsoft’s software allow customers to reimburse directly from their own side, which is advantageous to evade the complications of involving the vendor along the way. Instead of pulling from a vendor bank account number and routing number, the information will be pulled from the customer.

The central features for an improved process in your SKsoft software include:

Customer bank account approval for customer reimbursements.
Supporting inbound acknowledgment files.
Customer details and customer bank accounts are used.
No vendor is reacquired.

In the electronic funds transfer section of the software, you’re able to set customer reimbursement parameters in the Treasury Automation Suite. This allows you to establish your:

Default method of payment.
Default payment specification.
Minimum amount to reimburse.
Minimum days for reimbursement.

Specifying how your customer reimbursement will work can help you optimize your process even more. This section also provides you with the option to include customer invoices or allow overrides on payment proposals. After defining your general guidelines for these procedures, you can continue the process with the customer reimbursement journal in your accounts receivable section.

Creating and sending customer reimbursement files in the treasury automation suite can help you rest assured the process will be efficient and successful. Once a bank sends the inbound file back, the process will automatically complete in the software for you, and if there are any complications along the way, you can easily reverse the posted payment if necessary.

The Benefits of a Streamlined System

According to a report from Statista, the use of online and mobile banking is estimated to steadily increase from 2020 to 2024. Finding ways to make online reimbursements and overall financial operations more efficient will be extremely valuable in the coming years. Advanced solutions from SKsoft and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are not only an option to streamline customer reimbursement, but also to save time and money in the process.

Evolving technology enables you to identify redundant operations that can be effectively diminished or cut off altogether. Direct customer reimbursement can help you save time and money while you avoid going between multiple accounts as well as the possible errors involved with a more complex system. While this improvement might seem simple in nature, the culmination of inefficient processes can cost companies as much as 30% of their revenue, as reported by Towards Data Science. Taking steps to employ the most efficient systems possible throughout your operations is the best way to maintain long-term success.

Optimizing Your Financial Processes With SKsoft

With solutions from SKsoft and the latest software update, you can easily and efficiently manage your customer reimbursements. This is a boon to your overall business, allowing you to avoid any unnecessary, arduous or time-consuming tasks to complete the process.

Moreover, with the Treasury Automation Suite add-on for Microsoft Dynamics 365, you can quickly automate and improve a majority of your most intense financial processes. Enjoy cash payment, vendor payment and customer payment automation, all while increasing your risk management for the most successful and efficient results. These upgrades and solutions exist to empower your finance teams in key functional areas where they might need help the most.

If you’re ready to streamline your customer reimbursement and host of other financial operations, contact SKsoft today to get started.

While organizations continue to navigate changes and uncertainty across industries, the need to put more efficient systems in place is quickly becoming a priority — and your financial operations are no exception. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Dynamics AX, your organization can take advantage of valuable automation tools to keep efficiency and productivity high, while providing you with a significant leg up on the competition.

Read on to learn more about payment matching and how automation can optimize your systems and benefit your financial teams overall.

What Is Payment Matching?

Payment matching typically involves processing and posting payment files, which are statements from a bank or other source that contain financial transaction data. This often includes data for accounts receivable transactions, such as payments or payment cancellations.

Traditionally, payment matching entailed a hefty manual workload for your accounts receivable team. Not only is this work arduous and time-consuming for your financial operations, but there are inevitable errors along the way. However, as digitization and automation continue to increase across industries, there’s a better way to elevate and streamline your payment matching process.

Improving Your Process With Payment Matching for Microsoft Dynamics 365

With advanced solutions from SKsoft, you can quickly optimize and automate your payment matching process. This software instantly recognizes customer payments and applies them to the correct invoices within your Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Dynamics AX system. Automating your payment matching can significantly increase your efficiency by helping your financial teams avoid time-consuming and tedious manual processes that were a necessity before. This effectively provides the opportunity for your employees to focus on what’s most important while letting SKsoft do a great deal of the hard work for you.

The amount of data and information handled by your financial teams can quickly become overwhelming and is inevitably error-prone without an intelligent system in place. However, with help from automatic matching payments, your accounts receivable team can easily and competently handle large volumes of incoming data.

It’s important to keep in mind that achieving significant automation can be difficult, considering your systems or processes require the ability to manage a multitude of exceptions. These might include customers providing limited information with their payment or working with a payment amount that doesn’t match. To most financial teams’ dismay, the possibilities of exceptions are endless and varied.

This means implementing a robust and intelligent financial system that can adequately handle and process large volumes of payments, along with any exceptions, is more important than ever. Luckily, payment matching in the Treasury Automation Suite has the capabilities your organization needs to do this successfully. Your teams can manage considerable amounts of data and configure the automation rules down to a customer-specific level with one upgraded solution.

Rest assured that you can apply this solution across any number of bank accounts in which you receive customer payments, and this automated payment matching in your Microsoft Dynamics 365 software will process incoming payments according to your own configured rules. Not only will this greatly reduce the manual workload on your accounts receivable team, but it also can provide your organization with a host of advantages as a result.

Key Benefits of Automated Payments Matching

According to Camunda’s State of Process Automation report, 51% of automation initiatives are aimed at boosting efficiency, and this certainly includes your payment matching. While a seemingly simple solution at first glance, automated payments matching with SKsoft is a major boon to your performance and productivity while providing a number of other key benefits along the way.

The main advantages of advanced payment matching from SKsoft include:

Automatically importing large volumes of payment files from any number of banks or bank accounts in your Microsoft Dynamics 365 enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
Instantly processing incoming payments you receive, which are mapped and applied to the correct customer invoice in your system.
Specifically configuring your automation rules to deal with typical exceptions.
Significantly increasing your efficiency through automation.
The coverage of any bank and any bank-specific file format — along with ongoing maintenance across any bank integration type.

The culmination of these benefits is an effective way to save your accounts receivable and financial teams valuable time in the long run. In fact, Salesforce has found that 73% of IT leaders report automation technology saving employees between 10% and 50% of the time they previously spent doing manual tasks. By alleviating the burden of manual work done by your workforce, they have the ability to focus on the work that truly requires human attention and intervention.

Solutions from the Treasury Automation Suite in Microsoft Dynamics 365 are also an effective way to give your organization a valuable competitive edge when you might need it most. Efficiency, productivity and accuracy are always a priority, and utilizing advanced options for automation is a great option to get you there. Unlock your team’s full potential with help from SKsoft.

Implementing Advanced Solutions From SKsoft

Solutions from SKsoft provide your teams with the robust financial intelligence you need to optimize your payment matching. Substantially increase your efficiency and save valuable time, all while mitigating the manual burden on your accounts receivable team. With automation, you can quickly streamline your payment matching process.

The Banking and Treasury Automation Suite add-on for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Dynamics AX is advantageous to more than just your payment matching. Enjoy a host of invaluable automation tools for cash management, vendor payment and customer payment, and rest assured your data is highly secure with top-tier protection included. Implementing automation and improving your systems is more important than ever to keep pace with demand and competitors, and solutions from SKsoft exist to empower your finance teams with seamless integration and to drive your operational efficiency moving forward.

If you’re ready for more intelligent payment matching or simply want to explore your options for automation, contact SKsoft or schedule a demo to get started.

In terms of your organization’s financial processes, bank reconciliation is surely top of mind. Reconciliation is a necessity to ensure your records are in order, but this process can be an arduous task for your financial teams. Luckily, with more efficient and powerful solutions in place, your approach can become seamless.

Read on to learn more about the reconciliation process and how advanced solutions can help you optimize your systems.

What Is Bank Reconciliation?

In bookkeeping, bank reconciliation refers to the process by which an account balance in an organization’s books is reconciled to the balance reported by the financial institution. Essentially, this bank statement is a summary of banking and business activity, reconciling an entity’s financial records with its bank account.

This process is a necessity for organizations to catch errors or discover any unusual account activity. If you’re finding discrepancies between your bank balance and cash account balance, you’re not alone. Disparities are relatively normal, but what’s most important is fixing them — which is where reconciliation comes into play.

Why is bank reconciliation important?

The bank reconciliation process exists as a form of oversight and internal control for companies. Not only does this help entities detect fraud, but also prevents errors from occurring. Most importantly, it validates that the accounting process and the cash on the balance sheet are correct.

Traditionally, bank reconciliation involved a manual process. However, this approach is increasingly inefficient, which could spell trouble for your organization.

The challenges of manual reconciliation

Manual bank reconciliation has served as a sufficient way to manage financial statements over the years, but there are a few problems that companies run into as a result. Most are aware that a manual process is tedious and time-consuming, but this leads to one of most financial team’s main issues — reconciliation is inevitably fraught with human error. When dealing with hefty amounts of data, there’s significant room for mistakes. Because of this, errors are common in almost any manual financial process, which makes reconciliation even more difficult in the long run.

Another considerable issue in manual reconciliation concerns fraud protection and prevention. Large amounts of data in conjunction with possible reconciliation errors means fraud might not be detected in a timely manner or could possibly go undetected altogether. This can be detrimental to your financial security and will likely have wide-reaching effects throughout your organization. However, with advanced solutions and enhanced software at your disposal, you can quickly streamline your bank reconciliation process.

Improving Your Process With Automatic Bank Reconciliation

Automation is on the rise and it’s a progressively sought-after solution for optimizing your current systems. In fact, a 2020 report from McKinsey & Company found that over 50% of organizations are adopting automation for at least one function. As automation continues to grow in use and importance, considering how you can utilize this technology to your advantage will become critical. This will be highly beneficial for your accounting teams.

In terms of account reconciliation, automation leverages technology or software to replace the manual task of overseeing, comparing and managing an entities’ financial statements and accounting records. Implementing automatic reconciliation can help your finance teams and your organization see a host of benefits as a result.

The main advantages of automating some of your most onerous financial processes include:

Saving time: According to a report from Zapier, 60% of knowledge workers use automation to save time, and your bank reconciliation process is no exception. Automation allows you to complete the process significantly faster than if done manually.
Reducing human error: Even the most competent of financial teams are bound to make mistakes dealing with such hefty amounts of information. However, spotting any discrepancies during reconciliation is a vital part of the process. With the right automation solution in place, your organization can rest assured that any anomalies will be precisely, easily and quickly detected.
Detecting and preventing fraud efficiently: Managing fraud is increasingly top of mind for companies, as J.P. Morgan reports nearly 75% of organizations were targets of a payments fraud attack in 2020. With manual reconciliation, you’re likely to find delays in identifying irregularities or run the risk of not detecting these issues at all. Automated reconciliation can detect these problems swiftly, which can significantly lower your threat of fraud and mitigate damage to your organization.
Improving visibility over the process: One of the most critical benefits of enhanced reconciliation software is the ability to oversee and manage the process more efficiently. Handling things manually can make it difficult to get a clear overview of what’s actually happening, but with automation software, you’ll have access to real-time data when you need it most.
Saving money: Not only is manual reconciliation time-consuming, but inevitable errors can make it costly as well. These costs can come from problems associated with unreconciled transactions or, worse, from cyberattacks that went undetected. A better system is a necessity to save your organization money in the long run.
Increasing your financial security: Along with fraud protection, automation can be a boon to your overall security. With reconciliation solutions from SKsoft, your sensitive banking information isn’t released into a cloud but kept in logs. This closed communication loop between the software and your bank accounts can help you feel confident that your information is secure.

While the benefits of automatic bank reconciliation are clear, you might be wondering what exactly the reconciliation process entails. Understanding the general stages involved in this banking activity is important, as well as recognizing what an automated process should look like and include.

How Can You Automate the Reconciliation Process

Traditional reconciliation involves multiple steps to complete the process. These steps typically include:

Compiling your bank records and business records.
Determining your starting point.
Going through your bank deposits.
Checking the income in your books.
Running through your bank withdrawals.
Matching withdrawals to the expenses on your books.
Verifying your end balance.

However, automation can help your organization complete these steps, all with one simple solution. Automated reconciliation from SKsoft aims to empower your financial teams to their fullest potential. Whether your organization deals with a short list of financial institutions or multiple banks, utilizing advanced software can help you efficiently automate cash management while improving your visibility over the entire process.

The cash and bank automation function in the Treasury Automation Suite from SKsoft allows you to:

Automatically reconcile bank statements, fully unattended.
Improve matching and mapping with configurable rules.
Automatically import bank statements.
Improve oversight of multiple bank accounts and legal entities.
Automatically create reconciling transactions.

If your business has continued manual financial processes over the years, it might be time to consider the switch to a more powerful solution. Take the load off of your finance teams and leave the hard work to capable software, so they can focus on the tasks that actually require human attention.

Utilizing Advanced Solutions for Reconciliation With SKsoft

Traditional bank account reconciliation is tedious, repetitive, time-consuming, error-prone and typically inefficient. Fortunately, some traditions are made to be broken, and when it comes to your reconciliation process, there’s certainly a better way. Advanced solutions and accounting software from SKsoft exist with efficiency and accuracy in mind — so you can quickly streamline your financial systems.

The Treasury Automation Suite for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations includes top-tier automation to simplify your electronic bank statement reconciliation. This allows entities to ensure their bank account and general ledger are balanced, without the strenuous manual work. Account reconciliation software is also a valuable way to reduce errors, save money and improve financial security, all while significantly increasing your efficiency.

If you’re ready for an automated reconciliation tool that works for you, explore our cash and bank automation in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Dynamics AX. Or, contact SKsoft today to schedule a demo and get started.

For decades, customer and vendor payments were processed manually. However, managing these payment process operations by hand is not only tedious and costly but also time-consuming and error-prone. Luckily, advanced payment gateway solutions in financial procedures provide a considerably simpler and more efficient way to get the job done.

Payment processing solutions

A payment processing solution refers to the software a business implements to enable financial transaction procedures, generally employed by a merchant, to handle activity with customers from various channels. This helps streamline the process of relaying information from a credit card, debit card or alternative payment method from a merchant account to both your bank and your customer’s issuing bank.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Dynamics AX, the Treasury Automation Suite provides upgraded payment processing with automated solutions. When it comes to employing automation, 51% of these initiatives are aimed at boosting efficiency, as reported by Camunda in 2020. However, utilizing these improved systems is not only critical to increase efficiency but also to reduce errors, save valuable time, improve your customer service and empower your teams throughout your merchant services and overall financial operations.

Streamlining customer payment processing with powerful automation

If your accounts receivable automation software doesn’t automate enough, you’re left with too many unresolved transactions at the end of the period. This results in costly and time-consuming manual reconciliation.

Most organizations need improved automation software to manage their contactless payments, payment processing service and financial activity more efficiently. With SKsoft Treasury Automation Suite, you can optimize these procedures with upgraded accounts receivable customer payment automation.

This payment gateway software includes features such as:

Customer payment matching: This customer payment solution is configurable down to the user level, and these matches can be made based on dates, amounts, payment reference or deposit or check number. Moreover, you can utilize rule groups and confidence levels for enhanced matching in online payment processing and credit card processing.
Summary Journal matching rule: This aspect is intended to automatically match transactions from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations to one bank statement. The Summary Journal matching rule is a powerful tool that can be used to solve a very common digital payment or credit card processing problem your finance teams might be facing.
Mapping rules to create general ledger (GL) entries: The Treasury Automation Suite can also create GL entries when transactions seen in a bank statement are not in Microsoft Dynamics 365. This online payment processing software intends to go above and beyond to ensure your customer payment matching and merchant services are as accurate as possible — working seamlessly with any issuing bank or financial institution.Implementing upgraded solutions to handle your card processing and customer payment automation can help your financial teams operate more efficiently — all while providing the control and flexibility you need to ensure the transaction process runs smoothly. These feature-rich tools can result in increased cash flow, improved control and reduced errors along the way.

Integrating and automating vendor payments

Another payment processing solution included in the Treasury Automation Suite is vendor payment automation. This software integrates and automates outbound payments to any banking platform in the world and allows you to consolidate outbound files from multiple payment journals within your system. Essentially, vendor payment automation is designed to guarantee fast and accurate payment to a vendor or merchant, while improving these working and investor relations as a result.

Along with simplifying and improving the communication and transactions between your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and your financial institution, you can rest assured that these card payments and processes are protected with security enhancement features like easily configured secure file transfer protocol upload and inbound file processing and management. The centralized and automated payment processor software works to ensure communication and data transfer is seamless and secure.

Automated vendor payment features expand your organization’s ability to process payments faster — including card payments, recurring payments and more. Additionally, with upgraded security measures, you can have confidence that your data and printed checks are protected. Integrating and automating vendor payments empowers your finance teams to execute critical processes intelligently, efficiently and securely. As a result of this powerful tool, your organization can comfortably execute any type of domestic or international transaction throughout your operations.

The benefits of optimized payment automation solutions

Utilizing intelligent business applications to optimize your financial processes and merchant transactions provides your organization with a host of benefits. Leveraging this technology to reap these advantages is progressively becoming a key element in fostering business growth and maintaining a competitive edge. The main benefits you can expect to see as a result of payment processing solutions include:

Saving time: By reducing the need for manual configuration in your financial processes, your organization can save important time — while simultaneously freeing your workforce up to complete more complex tasks. In fact, a report from CRMside found that 69% of employees reported automation reduced their wasted time.
Reducing costs: Advanced payment processor solutions are also a valuable way to cut manual costs. According to a report from Salesforce, 57% of IT leaders claimed that automation technology saves organizations between 10% and 50% on costs previously associated with manual processing.
Increased accuracy: Cutting-edge ERP systems handle many of the tedious manual tasks of the past, which largely reduces the likelihood of human error. By mitigating mistakes that lead to misconfigured systems, automation helps ensure consistency, adherence to processes, PCI compliance and increased security.
Enhancing insight and transparency: Automation software provides predictive insights and embedded analytics for a clearer oversight of your financial operations. This is essential to help your business make better and more informed decisions moving forward.
Improving risk management: The security involved in these merchant services aims to improve protection from outside attacks while focusing on internal fraud protection as well. Throughout the process, your organization can have peace of mind knowing the high-security measures included in the software offers top-tier protection.

Overall, payment automation software enables your business to manage payment processing in a centralized data platform. This can help you accept payments and manage recurring payments, credit card payments or any other form of digital payment, all in one advanced payment solution. Streamlining these processes is critical for providing clearer oversight, improving your customer service and increasing control over your financial systems, procedures and data collection long-term.

Is your organization ready to automate? SKsoft to learn more about how customer and vendor payment automation in our Treasury Automation Suite can improve your business’s financial operations.

Accurate and efficient bank processes are essential for businesses, but handling these aspects manually can be restricting. Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides a simpler way to manage these processes. Read on to learn how advanced finance solutions can streamline your operations.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Dynamics AX for improved business applications

Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Dynamics AX work as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to improve financial processes and foster business growth. Essentially, an ERP system refers to any software that an organization uses to manage and mediate its main business operations. These systems are a source of potential for organizations, as 49% of companies stated an ERP implementation improved all of their business processes, according to a report from Panorama Consulting Solutions.

Leveraging an intelligent business application is becoming increasingly essential to not only optimize your systems and promote growth but also to maintain a competitive edge. As industries continue to evolve and grow in complexity, implementing advanced solutions will become a significant factor in how your organization adapts, responds and progresses in the long run.

Automation solutions provided by the Treasury Automation Suite

With manual processing comes lengthy and tedious data entry and inevitable errors along the way. However, advanced automation is an effective way to mitigate these common issues. In fact, a report from Salesforce found that 73% of IT leaders claimed automation success saved employees between 10% and 50% of time they had previously spent doing manual tasks. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Dynamics AX, the Treasury Automation Suite offers automated solutions in key functional areas to reduce errors, save valuable time and empower your finance teams along the way.

These cutting-edge solutions include:

Cash management automation

With cash management automation, your business can benefit from unattended bank reconciliation. A bank reconciliation statement refers to the summary of an organization’s banking and business activity that reconciles an entity’s bank accounts with its financial records. While this exhausting and error-prone process has been completed manually for decades, advanced cash management solutions from Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Operations can streamline your system. With configurable matching and mapping, automatically imported bank statements and unattended reconciling transactions, you can substantially speed up and lower the cost of the process. Your organization can additionally leverage improved visibility across all bank accounts and entities while increasing security throughout reconciliation along the way.

Vendor payment automation

The vendor payment software is a feature-rich player within the Treasury Automation Suite, integrating and automating outbound payments to any banking platform in the world. You can easily enhance your financial processes with integrated and direct communication from your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations or Microsoft Dynamics AX system to your bank. While you enjoy advanced software features, you can rest assured your communications are seamless and secure.

Customer payment automation

Another powerful automation feature included in these systems is customer payment automation — which involves upgraded customer payment matching and credit card processing. With highly intelligent accounts receivable automation software, you can avoid a high number of unresolved transactions at the end of the period. By automating as many customer payments as possible, the software saves your organization indispensable time. This solution runs continuously in the background and flags discrepancies as they come up so you can manage transactions efficiently.

Risk management

Throughout these processes of automation and tight integration, you can rest assured that your data is secure with key risk management features. Not only do Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Dynamics AX focus on improving security breach protection from outside attacks, but improving security measures in terms of internal fraud protection as well. This allows your administrators, managers, CFOs and CIOs to operate confidently.

The benefits of robust financial intelligence

Along with advanced automation, your organization can leverage embedded analytics and predictive insights to improve your global financial operations. These insights and predictive analytics are invaluable to your organization’s oversight and management. Improving transparency allows your organization to understand its processes to the fullest extent, while insights help you to make better-informed decisions moving forward.

Moreover, embedded analytics may be a key factor in improving your customer service and cash flow. A report from Logi Analytics found that 96% of organizations claim embedded and predictive analytics contributed to their overall revenue growth and 94% reported advanced data lead to higher customer satisfaction. As businesses continue to work towards successful business growth, intelligent business applications will be essential to help you get there.

Organizing, automating and optimizing your enterprise’s finance and operations

Poor financial management is often a detriment to the business process, but the robust financial intelligence offered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP and Microsoft Dynamics AX can help you organize, automate and optimize your operations.

Age-old banking processes are just that — old. While a suitable solution for the past, manual finance practices are generally inefficient, costly and error-prone. It’s valuable to consider advanced solutions for your enterprise’s finance and operations to bring your systems into the present and keep pace with competitors and evolving industries. Moreover, a streamlined process is becoming progressively necessary to foster successful business growth and improve your organization’s cash flow.

If your organization is ready to optimize its day-to-day financial processes, SKsoft can help you get there. Schedule a demo and get started on your journey to more intelligent business solutions.

Traditional methods for bank-to-bank transfers can make your financial processes more complicated than necessary, but advanced solutions can streamline your systems — especially if these transfers are a common occurrence for you or your organization. Read on to learn more about bank-to-bank transfers and how advanced solutions from SKsoft can optimize your processes.

What Is a Bank-to-Bank Transfer?

A bank-to-bank transfer refers to consumers moving money electronically. Specifically, this involves the transfer of money from one bank account to another at a banking company.

If you or your organization has funds spread within a financial institution, it’s advantageous to find an efficient way to make transfers between your accounts. Evolving technology has made online payments a sufficient option to move money from one place to another. However, internal transfers online can still be more time-consuming than necessary. The traditional process of transferring money from one bank account to another typically involves:

Linking the accounts: This is the first step to set up internal bank transfers online. It’s necessary to log into a bank’s website and ensure you’re able to move money between accounts. This is also when it’s significant to consider whether internal transfers or external transfers are what you’re looking to achieve.
Setting up transfers: When it comes to internal transfers, you don’t have to worry about providing external account information or verifying the account. However, you will have to log into the portal each time you need to set up an internal transfer. Typically, you can utilize the bank’s website or app to complete these processes online. Keep in mind a bank-to-bank transfer will take about three business days to complete depending on where the money is going and what network you’re using, according to Western Union.

While the need to log into a bank portal each time you make a transfer may not seem arduous at first glance, these processes can quickly become tedious and time-consuming — especially if they are needed often. SKsoft offers a better way, so you can enjoy the most efficient bank-to-bank transfers possible.

Features of Improved Bank-to-Bank Transfers

Upgraded solutions from SKsoft can make your processes simple. These options are progressively important considering 71% of bank customers conduct their business online, according to statistics from ValuePenguin. The latest version of the software helps you bypass the need to log onto external portals to make your transfers. Instead, the bank-to-bank transfer aspect of the solution allows you to go back into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to quickly take care of any internal bank account transfers.

The main features of this software for bank-to-bank transfers allow you to:

Transfer money across legal entities.
Support inbound acknowledgment files.

Avoid the need to set up a fake vendor.

24/7 account access: Online banks are highly operative, generally giving you 24/7 access as long as you have an internet connection. Some banks even offer around-the-clock access to real-life customer service agents in case of any complications. These benefits are even more attainable with improved internal transfer solutions.
Improved speed and efficiency: The most advantageous aspect of SKsoft solutions for bank-to-bank transfers is the speed and efficiency it can provide your organization. You’ll no longer need to log onto multiple websites to initiate a transfer, but rather can access these features within the ERP system and SKsoft solution itself.

Increased security: These advanced solutions are also a boon to your security systems. It can be difficult to feel completely comfortable while working with banks online. However, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Dynamics AX offer high-security measures so you can complete internal transfers and rest assured that you have top-tier protection along the way.