Leverage AP Payments as a Service: Top 5 Benefits for Law Firms

September 26, 2019

In a dusty back office in your law firm, accounts payable clerks labor over processing paper checks the old-fashioned way — running checks through a printer, stuffing envelopes and then distributing checks to local employees and mailing out checks to everyone else. Senior partners at law firms billing $1,000 an hour still spend time signing checks in many instances.

It’s expensive, time-consuming, and risky.

And it doesn’t have to be this way.

By leveraging AP Payments-as-a-Service, your law firm can cut costs, free up your accounting staff for more valuable tasks and mitigate your risk.

Check out these top 5 benefits you can reap by switching from manual AP Payments to AP Payments-as-a-Service:

1. Gain AP Efficiencies:

Traditional AP procedures are extremely inefficient for law firms, employees, and vendors. Accounts payable staff spends hours on manual tasks such as inputting payroll information, processing checks and distributing checks to employees and vendors.

Anytime manual processes are used, there’s a higher potential for human error. These errors must be corrected, which involves more time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere. Errors are also potentially expensive and risky.

Instead of tying up your accounting department staff with mind-numbing tasks such as processing paper checks, free up their time for higher value-add tasks such as cash-flow forecasting, income and expense analysis, and other valuable activities that will contribute to the success of your law firm. Using Finexio or other AP solutions creates efficiencies and frees up valuable resources.

2. Reduce Payments Fraud Risk:

Check fraud created $18 billion dollars in losses for U.S. organizations in 2018, according to the FBIi. No organization is immune.

70% of U.S. organizations are affected by check fraud.

Fraudsters are increasingly utilizing technology to commit check fraud by exploiting apps that allow remote deposit. In fact, mobile check capture fraud is rising so rapidly that some banks are considering rolling the benefit back, according to PYMNTS.com.

Employing a firm that offers payments-as-a-service moves the vast majority of your payments online, creating a much more secure verifiable payments environment. Reducing fraud risk will save your firm time and money.

3. Increase AP Visibility:

When payments are made by check and processed manually, it’s very difficult to gain visibility over your entire payments ecosystem. Instead of operating from a strategic perspective, your staff is in reactive mode, processing payments manually and putting out the inevitable fires that result.

Driving AP payments via a platform like Finexio creates the opportunity to gain strategic visibility over your entire accounts payable payments process. Removing manual processes creates the opportunity to build a responsible workflow around outsourced tasks.

Automated accounts payable functions mean that information is available to anyone in your AP Department quickly and easily. This information can be analyzed for relevant trends and intelligence, which comes with more opportunities for efficiency as well as the availability of relevant data. Suppliers also appreciate a digital window and electronic reporting into when and how they are being paid, making it easier for them to do cash application.

4. Cut AP Costs:

Cutting and signing checks is expensive. The behind-the-scenes labor involves check production, mail preparation, filing checks, reconciling checks, responding to lost checks, and management oversight. Overt costs involved in paying employees and vendors by check include:

Postage
Envelopes
Check Stock
Printer Toner

Then there are bank check fees, stop payment fees, positive pay fees, and monthly maintenance fees for business checking accounts. While it’s not easy to establish a cost per business check, Aberdeen Group reports an average cost of a check payment at $7.78 each.

Relying on an AP Payments-as-a-Service firm eliminates those costs.

5. Create Revenue Opportunities:

Imagine turning your accounts payable operation from a cost center to a profit generator. When you work with a company like Finexio, that’s exactly what happens.

How? Finexio’s intelligent electronic payment network identifies, delivers and supports 100 percent of all of your supplier payments. This generates revenue for your company through rebates and discount capture. Savings are achieved by shifting costly paper checks to low or no-cost digital payment types.

Adopting automated payments through a smart B2B supplier network will not only save your company money and provide your vendors with more efficient ways to be paid, but it will also actually generate revenue.

A Final Word:

Your law firm can benefit from efficiencies, cost savings and more by automating your accounts payable function. Dumping manual processes in favor of working with payments experts like Finexio will not only bring your AP Payments function up-to-date, but also provide valuable intelligence about your cash flow, payables and more.

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