Businesses of all sizes have to deal with payment headaches, but managing payments can be especially difficult for larger organizations. From tracking invoices to ensuring timely payments, businesses must navigate a myriad of issues when it comes to making and receiving payments.

This article explores the biggest business payment headaches and offers solutions on how to prevent or solve them. Whether you’re an entrepreneur just starting out or a large corporation, this article will provide you with insights into the most common pain points associated with business payments.

Business Payment Headaches #1: Financial Record Accuracy

Reconciling your accounts payable and accounts receivable is one of the most important tasks for a business, but it’s like taxes: no one wants to do it, but everyone knows it needs to be done.

But unlike taxes, your accounts should be reconciled considerably more often than once a year. Some businesses have certain reconciliatory tasks that help the most when they are done daily or weekly. But monthly reconciliation is a must for all businesses. And that’s because your errors in this arena can compound – if one week is off, then the month is off, and that can lead to quarterly and annual report issues, too.

There are several reasons your accounts may be inaccurate. Here are a few of the most common:

• Discounts vouchers, and other one-time or temporary offers
• International bank charges
• Customers with a remaining balance being carried over to be paid later
• Notes missing for an invoice, expense, etc.
• Customer error
• Incorrect payment amount

These and other potential issues are often small issues that become bigger business payment headaches. Automation and great reports and reconciliation tools, like those offered by ReliaFund, are great solutions that keep your books clean and your financial staff stress-free.

Headache #2: Relying on Manual Processes

We’ve all heard it: if you want something done right, you should do it yourself. But business owners and managers know that it’s impossible for a small team or sole proprietor to do everything a modern business needs done in order to keep up with shifting demand and competitive markets.

If you can automate or create a system that reduces or eliminates human error in mundane tasks, your business will be healthier and more efficient from both an operations and financial standpoint.

There are dozens of payment methods, and each of your customers has their own preferred method. While you can’t cater to everyone individually, you can create a robust and integrated payment system that helps you automate and organize your payment traffic.

This also saves your business money. Cost-effectiveness is a huge benefit that your business should be chasing, and it’s arguably more important than profits. If the pandemic taught us nothing else, it’s that scalability and adaptability are worth more to a business than a huge profit margin.

Headache #3: Processing Fee Navigation

From PayPal to credit cards to banks – many of the most popular payment methods have complicated fees associated with them.

For example, PayPal, Stripe, and other popular payment systems are well-known for having high transaction fees, conversion charges for international payments, and regulatory hoops your business may struggle to navigate.

Before you link your business or e-commerce site to a payment system, it’s important to do some research to see what the associated fees, charges, and restrictions are.

Cryptocurrency is in the news a lot, but that doesn’t mean you need to rush to incorporate this payment type into your business integrations.

Having a central hub, like ReliaFund’s customizable payment platform, can also help you keep track of what payment types your customers are using the most and the least.

Headache #4: Security Concerns

Because so many of our payment options (both sent and received) are now digitally based, security is becoming a multi-faceted issue. In 2020, more than 70% of companies experienced attempted or successful payment fraud.

If you have a set of payment systems that are difficult to navigate, your risks for fraud and other system manipulations increase.

There are several common types of payment fraud, including:

• Invoice fraud: This is where businesses or individuals send fake or altered invoices in an attempt to deceive the business owner or account manager into sending funds to fraudulent accounts.
• Payment Fraud: This occurs when a payment that was sent to or from your business has been intercepted by someone who is not the intended recipient. Most often, this occurs when fraudsters intercept or alter payment or account information to redirect legitimate funds to their own accounts.
• Fraudulent buyers: This happens when someone manufactures payment information, funds, income, or other bank information to trick business owners.
• Chargebacks and disputes: This is a huge one for products-based businesses and it occurs when buyers claim that a product was damaged or never arrived at its destination in an attempt to keep the product and also be issued a refund from the business.

In many of these cases, strong security protocols as well as detailed record-keeping can help alleviate some of the headaches that come with payment fraud attempts.

Relieve the Pressure of Payment Pain Points

Your customers and clients are looking for simple, easy ways to pay you for your products and services. And your business should have a solid strategy for collecting and organizing transactions without triggering business payment headaches for you or your customers.

ReliaFund has a full range of payment processing options, including 24/7 secure online payments. You can accept ACH, all major credit cards, and debit cards with our PCI-compliant online payment solutions.