Billing & Payments
Manage the invoices and payments of your customers and suppliers
Digital Self Service - Transactions include billing and payment features such as viewing and paying a bill, reviewing payment history, and selecting billing and payment options such as paperless billing. Links are available to customers to take common billing actions such as viewing more details about their current bill, comparing previous bills, exploring their energy use, and changing their utility account communication preferences.
Why are Online Payment Services Necessary?
If you're like many small organizations, you collect payments mainly through cash or checks. While this might be working for you at the moment, adding online payments provides a number of advantages to you and your supporters.
Meet expectations
People are increasingly comfortable paying online. When members, customers or supporters are ready to sign up, register for an event, or make a donation, they want to do it quickly and easily. In fact, websites that don’t support online payment can be seen as being out of step.
Speed up the process
Online payments are faster than manual payments since you don’t have to wait for the check to arrive or for it to clear. The whole process – from submitting an online payment to updating your bank account – can take a matter of seconds. The end result is improved cash flow for your organization and almost immediate confirmation of transactions. Prospective members won’t have to wait to join your organization, and participants will know right away whether they have successfully registered for an event.
In addition, the online payment service lets you know right away if the person making the online payment has sufficient funds to cover the transaction – rather than finding out a week later when the check bounces.
Save you lots of trouble...
Automated payments also save you the trouble of depositing the check and recording the payment manually. Once you set up online payments for your website, they are automatically processed. You don’t handle or store any credit card information. Any updates to member records are handled automatically.
...But at a price
Of course, anything of value comes with a cost, and in this case, your payment provider will charge you a fee per transaction, and some charge other fees as well – such as setup fees or monthly fees.
But if online payment helps you grow your membership, your fundraising, or your online business, they’ll be taking a slice out of your much larger pie. We’ll explore the costs later, but now, before you start thinking about selecting a particular payment provider, it’s important to understand some online payment terminology, including payment provider.
How does the Online Payment Process work?
To fully understand how online payments work, let’s follow a transaction from start to finish. In this way, you can see how your website, your member or donor, and your payment service provider all interact.
To get started with online payment processing, you typically need:
- a merchant account – though some payment systems (such as PayPal) do not require a merchant account or can provide you with one
- an account with a payment service provider
- a web page with a button (e.g. Join, Donate, Buy) that initiates the transaction process – you can use code provided by your service provider or specialized shopping cart software
Once you’ve set up your web page and connected it to an online payment system, visitors to your site will be able to pay online for products or services. The online payment process begins when the visitor clicks the button to pay online for membership fees or event registration or to make a donation or purchase something from your online store.
On the online payment form that appears, the visitor enters their credit card information and submits the transaction request. Depending on your online payment service provider, the form may appear on your website, or your purchaser may be redirected to a form on your service provider’s website.
The transaction request, along with the credit card information entered by the purchaser, is securely transmitted to the payment gateway operated by your payment service provider. The information is encrypted so that no one – including you – can view the purchaser’s personal and financial information.
Your payment service provider will then use a secure payment processing service – either their own or one provided by another company – to verify the purchaser’s credit card details and confirm whether the purchaser has sufficient funds to complete the transaction.
If the purchaser’s credentials are valid and there are sufficient funds to complete the transaction, your payment service provider will initiate a transfer of funds from the purchaser’s bank account to the merchant account associated with your website, and notify your website that the transaction has been approved. Depending on how your website is set up, that information can be used to automatically update records on your site (e.g., update your membership management or event registration database).
If the transaction is declined for any reason – such as invalid credentials or insufficient funds – no funds will be transferred, but status information will still be sent to your website.
Example 1:
Create your Invoices
Create your invoices (common invoices, down payments, credit notes) from scratch or from your customer sheet. Depending on the modules / features you have enabled, you can also generate your invoice from your proposals (Proposal module), your orders (Order module), your contracts (Contract module) and / or interventions (Intervention module). If the module Margin is enabled, margin can be calculated from the best supplier, the cost price or the average weight price of your products. You will get margin statistics per product, customer, date etc.
Include predefined products to save you time, or enter full content manually.
If predefined fields do not match your requirements, add your own fields of any type (string, amount, date, checkbox, combo list etc.) to the invoice form.
Your invoices can also be generated automatically using the recurring template invoices.
The document of your invoice (PDF, ODT etc.) is automatically generated and updated.
Send your invoice and manage payments
Send your invoice via Email directly from the application. Use predefined email templates so that the email content is automatically filled in.
Generate a Direct Debit SEPA file for automatic bank payments in batch and follow the integration steps specific to your bank. Close your invoice by automatically changing it to the paid status once the bank has processed your SEPA file.
Provide your customer a link to pay online using Paypal, Stripe, Paybox, PayZen, etc.
Reuse down payment into another invoice to reduce the amount to pay or reuse a credit note into another invoice to reduce the remaining amount to pay.
Follow the status of your open Invoices
List and display all your orders. Choose which information you want to see in your lists. Filter and sort based on any criteria.
With the batch feature, get reminded about all your unpaid invoices.
Analyze your billing performance
Use predefined statistic pages to get useful information about the performance of your sales representatives.
Reuse your invoices with other modules
Export your invoices into the ledger of the accounting module to get your accountancy done automatically in just a few clicks.
Export your Invoices and payments with the Export module to reuse them with external tools, or connect your existing BI suite directly to the open database for Big Data analysis.
Example2:
A tailored bill payment solution that is accurate, timely and secure
Paying bills on behalf of high-net-worth families and individuals requires rigorous controls and processes. But traditional bill pay solutions oftentimes consist of highly manual processes and poorly suited software to manage vendor information, track expenses, manage cash flow and pay bills.
To serve the unique expense management needs of wealthy families, Our Company Services designed an exclusive personal expense management service that allows family offices, financial institutions and private wealth advisors to offload the tedious and time-consuming client bill payment process to our highly-skilled team of accounting professionals. This service leverages deep accounting expertise and sophisticated, proprietary expense management and bill payment tools housed within the Full Stack Zone to deliver an efficient, controlled and secure accounts payable alternative.
Purpose-built accounts payable tools to create a personalized bill payment process
Automated bill payment workflow
Devise multi-level workflow processes and approval hierarchies around common bill payment tasks like invoice review, expense data entry, invoice approval, payment settlement and cash flow reporting.
Digital payment approvals
Use the Archway Client Portal to digitize client payment approvals, notify clients of pending payments, share invoices and establish pre-approved bills – all from their mobile devices.
Reliable, outsourced bill payment
Through a unique combination of technology, security, automation and professional expertise, SEI Family Office Services ensures that your bill payment, reconciliation and expense reporting needs are met in a timely, accurate and secure manner.
A laser-focused team of bill payment specialists
Dedicated bill payment personnel
We couple our proprietary expense management and bill payment tools with our team of experienced client service and accounting professionals to facilitate the full spectrum of personal expense management services on behalf of you and your sophisticated clients.
Comprehensive bill payment process controls
Using state-of-the-art technology along with tightly-integrated workflow and accounting controls, our solution enforces the separation of duties and ensures the integrity of our bill payment and expense management service offering.
Transparent, auditable bill payment processes
Maintain a full activity log designed to comprehensively track vendors, bills, payments and their associated accounting entries for a complete audit trail that can give you and your clients peace of mind.
Tailored expense management and cash flow reporting for your clients
Consolidated cash flow reporting
Present aggregated and expertly reconciled expense activity across vendors, bills and expense categories through a variety of clear, insightful reports that can be used to determine when payments are due, which accounts are affected and how it impacts your client’s expense trends for the reporting period.
User-defined expense categories
Create user-defined expense categories tailored to your client to increase reporting engagement – from financial statements to expense detail reports, invoice aging overviews and consolidated cash summaries.
Digital client portal
Give your clients access to a complete analysis of their financial health including their cash balances, expenses and spending habits.
Integrated technology and services for a solution that fits you
Our flexible solutions allow you to create a unique combination of technology and services that makes most sense for your firm and your clients.
Technology Model
We doubt you only pay bills. Leverage the Archway Platform for its full suite of accounting, investment data aggregation and reporting capabilities – including built-in accounts payable tools – so that you’re accounting, investment and administrative teams can get the most out of a single system of record.
Outsourced Model
From invoice management to payment creation, generation and reconciliation, SEI Family Office Services can facilitate your complete bill payment process while allowing you to retain control over approvals and workflow processes. We can also prepare financial reporting to help your clients better understand their cash flow and spending habits.
Hybrid Model
Even if you use the Archway Platform in-house, SEI Family Office Services is happy to assist with the more time-consuming components of the bill payment process. Whether you need help importing and filing invoices, or launching the invoice approval process, we'll work together to create a solution based on workflow configurations defined by you.