The Environmental Benefits of AR Automation

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.

Related Resources:

• Save the Planet — Automate Your Accounts Receivable [Infographic]
• 5 B2B Invoicing Missteps and How Invoice Automation Can Help
• 4 Benefits of Upgrading Your Quote-to-Cash to Proposal-to-Payment

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?

The advantages of AR automation include fewer manual tasks taking your team’s time, automatic account updates, live dashboards, improved customer experience and increased efficiency. Here’s how each benefit plays out:

• Fewer manual tasks mean less busy work for your teams, and more time to focus on higher value operations
• Automatic account updating keeps customers’ payment details up to date so more payments go through
• Live dashboards with real-time updates provide instant insights into important metrics for better overall data management
• Improved customer satisfaction through better communication and visibility from the customer portal, meaning you get paid faster and fewer accounts go into collections
• Improved efficiency helps you save money, making it easier for your business to scale

Do I have to automate my entire AR process?

No, you do not have to automate your entire AR process with BlueSnap. The flexibility of BlueSnap’s AR Automation solution ensures that you only automate the processes you want to. This includes integrating with accounting, ERP and CRM software systems. BlueSnap AR Automation comes pre-integrated with the software you already use, so when you do want to start automating, you can do so without 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 handles the global currencies and payment types your customers want. 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.