The Value of Integrated ACH Payments
What are ACH payments?
ACH payments have become increasingly popular in the past few years. Each year, billions of dollars are processed in the United States through ACH payments, which are a type of electronic funds transfer that transmits electronic payments and money transfers in batches. ACH stands for Automated Clearing House, and business owners can use this payment method to electronically accept or send funds.
ACH payments are used to transfer money electronically between banks as an alternative to using credit cards, paper checks, wire transfers or cash. Some of the more common examples of ACH payments are as follows:
- Businesses that pay employees via direct deposit
- Customers who pay for an invoice via an ACH payment, instead of using a paper check
- The government provides tax refunds or interest payments to a bank account
Although ACH payments may sound unfamiliar, employers pay more than 93% of American workers via direct deposit. In 2021, financial institutions processed $29.1 billion in ACH payments, totaling over $72.6 trillion.
What are the benefits of integrated ACH Payments?
When an ACH payments integration is used with a workforce management solution, it automatically creates payment records and applies the payments and fees to the appropriate invoices, eliminating a number of manual processes. Here are a few more benefits for companies that decide to start collecting ACH payments:
- Collecting paper checks can lead to security risks, as check fraud is on the rise. Bank information can be exposed through the theft of a check or it can be lost during mailing. Electronic payment options minimize vulnerabilities, which reduces your liability.
- Integrating your systems and providing a single source of accurate data can reduce costs associated with manual processing methods. Reducing extra steps and double data entry saves time and effort for your administration team, lowering costs for processing payment requests. Also, inbound costs on wire transfer fees range from $15 – $20. ACH payments avoid those steep fees.
- To best determine the profitability of your individual jobs, it’s necessary to perform job costing. Performing the steps to accurately gauge job profitability requires accurate information. Integrating ACH payments with financial software helps you analyze processing fees, giving you a clearer view of job profitability.
- Giving clients the option to choose from a multitude of payment methods including ACH payments, credit cards, wire transfers and paper checks could lead to increased customer satisfaction.
- Offering multiple payment options may also improve your turnaround time on overdue invoices. A variety of secure payment options for future, late or missed payments could lead to a better cash flow.
Simplify financial processes with ACH payments
Adding integrated ACH payments to your accounts receivable processes can help your team redirect their valuable time and energy. Instead of encouraging administrative staffers to focus on manually processing transactions and entering payments, those same employees can focus on other tasks.
Recently, we at TEAM Software by WorkWave added online payment integration options to decrease the amount of processing fees and to help our clients protect their tight profit margins. Use WorkWave Payments with WinTeam to accept ACH and credit card payments – for any open invoice. At this time, the WinTeam Payments feature is currently only available in the U.S. Talk to your CSM for more information.