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Accounts Receivable (AR) automation offers many business benefits, including:

  • Improving cash flow by helping businesses get paid faster
  • Increasing AR teams’ productivity by automating repetitive tasks and reducing time spent on collections
  • Better forecasting based on more predictable collections and unified reporting
  • And helping a company reduce its environmental impact

Research shows that both employees and buyers are interested in working with sustainability-minded companies. Implementing AR automation is a step in the right direction. Let’s look at a few ways that automated AR can help improve sustainability and reduce a company’s carbon footprint.

Automated AR Reduces Paper Waste

The paper waste generated by offices is significant, with one estimation claiming the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper annually. As companies grow and build a bigger book of business, the paper needs for manual invoicing increase proportionally. While many businesses have tried to go paperless, it has been reported that more than 70% of companies are still using paper invoices and some companies are still faxing them.

Automated AR platforms that rely on emailing electronic invoices reduce the need for paper invoices almost to zero, significantly cutting down on the amount of paper a business uses. In addition to eliminating the need for paper invoices, AR automation software with integrated digital payments also cuts down on the number of paper checks that have to be mailed back and forth, reducing paper waste even further. This provides added benefits: your customers can pay you electronically in their preferred method and you receive the funds faster.

AR Automation Cuts Down on Office Supplies & Energy Consumption

Paper is not the only wasteful element of manual invoicing processes. While they may seem like drops in the bucket, the energy and materials needed to produce envelopes, stamps, printer ink, and address labels adds up. Even the energy needed to mail an envelope from your business to your client’s location can be significant when multiplied by the number of invoices you send each month, not to mention those customers who need to receive multiple invoices prior to payment.

With AR automation, everything can be handled electronically through email and online customer portals. That means invoices don’t need to be printed, mailed or faxed. When it comes to AR, an endless stream of printer cartridges that are a hassle to recycle are no longer needed. Neither are rubber bands for bundling deposits together or pages of address labels.

AR Automation Can Help Reduce Your Company’s Carbon Footprint

Possibly the biggest environmental impact AR automation has is allowing AR teams to work remotely. While studies have shown mixed results about whether overall energy consumption is down since remote work has become more prevalent, it has been proven that companies decrease their energy consumption and carbon footprint when employees work from home. Using AR automation software instead of manual processes provides more flexibility and allows interested businesses to take advantage of work-from-home arrangements

Remote companies use less energy and create less waste. Since their employees work from home, they reduce fossil fuel consumption and air pollution by eliminating commutes to the office. Also, the energy used to power, heat, and cool office buildings is significant. Businesses with remote workforces avoid those energy requirements (and the costs associated with them).

Learn More About the Benefits of AR Automation for Your Business

Automating AR and reducing the amount of paper, office supplies, and overall energy used to power manual invoicing can help your company reduce its carbon footprint and be greener in addition to supporting other positive business outcomes.

If you’re interested in AR automation and want to learn how it could benefit your business, talk to one of our payments experts.

Automating Accounts Receivable and Invoicing & Billing

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is AR automation?

AR automation, or accounts receivable automation, is the process by which manual accounts receivable tasks such as producing, sending and uploading invoices are instead handled by software. AR automation software can handle the entire accounts receivable process, allowing you the ability to automate any task you’d like to optimize.

What are the advantages of AR automation?

  • Fewer manual tasks mean less busy work for your teams, allowing them to focus on higher value operations.
  • Automatic account updating means immediate updates and instant notifications, reducing costly downtime and ensuring that payments are faster.
  • Dashboards are updated in real time, providing instant insights into important metrics such as AR performance, customer accounts, payment processing and more, for better overall data management.
  • Faster turnaround times and fewer errors result in less frustration for customers, while branded portals offer secure places for them to pay online.
  • Overall improved efficiency saves your company money, makes it easier to scale and can lead to more business opportunities.

Do I have to automate my entire AR process?

While you can automate your entire AR process, you certainly don’t have to. The flexibility of our AR automation solution ensures that you only automate the processes that you want to. This includes integrating with accounting, ERP and CRM software systems. Our AR automation solution comes pre-integrated with the software that you already use, so when you do want to start the automation process you can avoid complex onboarding or coding.

Can BlueSnap’s AR automation handle global sales?

Absolutely. Our Payment Orchestration Platform is designed to enable effective global sales, and AR automation is an important part of that. Our AR automation software can handle over 100+ currencies and 100+ payment types. Plus, our team handles regional regulations, so all your payments stay compliant and secure.

Can AR automation also handle subscriptions?

Yes. Subscriptions are automatically calculated in terms of recurring revenue. All of this information is placed in the reports section. The system breaks down all subscription revenue to its recurring monthly component, keeping track of all subscription revenue.