Payment Services
There are lots of different payment services apps available that work with cloud accounting. These help speed up processing time and improve cash flow.
PAYPAL
If you have a PayPal account, I strongly recommend getting it integrated with your accounts package.
Integrating PayPal with Xero and QuickBooks means that if you send invoices via email, your customer will see a “Pay Now” button that they can click to pay their bill there and then. Research has found this helps with your cash flow as most will click and pay there and then.
If you have an online store, integrating PayPal will pull the statements in just like a bank feed and AI will start matching the transactions against the money received and paid, speeding up the reconciliation time.
Not only that but too many times, I have seen businesses understating their turnover. They only account for the money that is hitting their back account. They do not record full sales price before PayPal fees have been deducted.
Accounting correctly for income should involve the full sale price being entered in your turnover account and then any fees or deductions being posted against an expense code. Understating your turnover could potentially mean you miss registering for VAT when your turnover goes above the threshold because you think it is less than it really is.
By integrating it with your accounting package, all of this is dealt with for you automatically.
Xero have a great setup video here:
GOCARDLESS
GoCardless is a direct debit solution to help get your sales invoices paid faster.
You can decide whether direct debit mandates are sent automatically with the customers first invoice or if they are sent manually. Once setup, you can then decide whether to setup an automatic direct debit or a manual one. Automatic means the direct debit will be processed on the due date of the invoice. Manual means you decide when the direct debit is processed.
In any case, the money hits your bank account two days after processing.
Similar to the bank and PayPal feeds, it will automatically reconcile in your accounting software to save hours of processing time.
GoCardless charge 1% of the transaction value with individual transactions capped at £5,000 for new customers. Their minimum processing fee is 20p and the maximum is £2.00.
If you are interested in using GoCardless, do get in touch as I can arrange a 3 month free trial.
OTHER PAYMENT SERVICES
Stripe and Worldpay work in a similar way to the PayPal integration and are particularly popular among e-Commerce businesses.
