Credit card transactions, along with many other payment channels, are a constant part of your daily business. The financial health of your enterprise relies heavily on the proper accounting for and reconciliation of these transactions. At the end of the day, your business needs to know how much revenue was generated and when those funds flow in.
Sales and payments have become ever-more complex over time. With credit cards, digital payment wallets and pay-later schemes, to name a few, affecting the flow and accounting of transactions.
Each payment channel has different terms and time frames. How does your accounting department stay abreast of every detail and reconcile efficiently? That’s where automation comes in. When you automate your reconciliation process your financial health improves significantly.
Accurate financial data
First and foremost, a business is only as strong as the accuracy of its financial data. Financial accuracy affects not just the short term viability of a business but its long-term success as well. If revenue is constantly being left behind or questions not followed up on, funds owing to the company simply seep out for no good reason.
With an automated system you gain financial accuracy on many levels. This takes the form of data that tells you:
- When money flows in,
- Individual fees structures of providers,
- Commission levels for each different payment provider,
- When there is an inconsistency and the funds are still outstanding,
- Information divided according to the streams of income flowing in from different providers, banks, credit card companies etc.
Easier provider comparison
When you have all the information available on a consistent basis you are in a much stronger position to analyze the costs versus benefits to your company when choosing which providers to adopt. Comparing differing rates, commission structures and time-frames, for example, will enable your company to make more informed decisions. Additionally, you will be able to reassess as needed when new players emerge or rates change.
An automated system gives you the ability to easily carry out comparisons between competing providers as the software incorporates information on the majority of large European (and international?) players and presents it in a way that’s ready to use.
Be better prepared for the yearly audit
With an automated system providing you with financial data and continuous reconciliation your company is prepared for many scenarios, one of the most important of those being the yearly audit.
With better data availability, accuracy and timeliness your company can meet auditing requests quickly and efficiently. Not only do you have the information ready at the time of the audit, but you have a financial trail extending throughout the entire year which answers any questions regarding inconsistencies and revenue flow.
Create comprehensive financial reports
The same applies for the yearly reporting needs. At those critical points in time when your business must prepare financial reports, the financial data is ready and waiting at your fingertips. This data is ready for financial analysis at the times when important business decisions must be made.
Gain technical efficiency
On the technical side, data extraction done with an automated process rather than manually, means data is extracted quickly and continuously. Your company is then able to ascertain information, such as unique identifiers, which may be difficult for an accountant to do manually. By automating the process the information can be gathered no matter what form or where it is hidden, converted and stored for use in company reconciliation.
Reduce the risk of accounting errors
Ongoing sales activity means large amounts of revenue and cost information traveling through your business daily. Reconciling these numbers manually in an Excel sheet leaves your company prone to human error. Some of which can have large repercussions. By automating the process the correct information is extracted and entered right down to the transactional level. No more importing large sets of data or taking an average when the numbers don’t balance and finding the error is a much too big task. With a proper automated system everything can be traced back to the source when investigation is needed.
Find the cause of discrepancies easily
Reconciliation aims to precisely match sales revenue data with bank or payment data. However, achieving a perfect match is not always possible. Even with an automated process, discrepancies surface. The difference is, that with an automated system you have the power to trace that information.
When a discrepancy is highlighted you have a string of information showing exactly what inputs were used and you therefore have the possibility to investigate those numbers and sources.
Furthermore, with such detailed data available, having a growing enterprise with large sales volumes is no impediment to accurate reconciliation and payment management. While in the past, your company may have had to sacrifice accuracy and focus on the larger accounts when the numbers didn’t match, with an automated system, you have transactional level data for all payment streams.
Daily reconciliation of credit card data saves you revenue in the long term since when doing so you can determine where the missing link is located and don’t lose out on further funds from possible insurance claims, unauthorized transactions or loss due to lack of investigating in a timely manner. With automation you can find the cause of inconsistencies easily and quickly. In some cases acting upon it within a certain time frame is critical.
The benefits of ReconHub
With ReconHub you get all the financial information you need for proper payment reconciliation presented and ready for you on a daily basis. All data sources are input and extracted at the source so you have reliable information to promote accuracy and consistency. The highly detailed data gives your company the financial security it needs to manage payment flow, daily reconciliation and cater to your financial reporting and auditing needs.
Your company can function knowing your reconciliation base is strong. Strong enough to support your present business needs as well as future sales growth and expansion.
If you want to find out how ReconHub can reinforce your accounting and reconciliation requirements, contact us!
