Cash flow is often considered one of the most important aspects of managing a business. Overseeing your accounts receivable (A/R) and keeping them up-to-date is essential to maintaining a steady cash flow. Our subscription management system, Multipub, offers extensive functionality to aid publishers in managing their A/R.
Issuing Invoices and Statements for Subscriptions
Invoices can be generated immediately after an order has been received or sent on a pre-determined schedule, such as weekly or monthly. Reminder notices and/or statements can also be generated on a scheduled basis, prompting customers to pay. These can be sent individually or along with the issue (if you’re doing print fulfillment).
To increase the chances that invoices and statements are paid, they can be distributed in a number of ways. For example, they can be sent to an alternate billing address or via print or email. Our email option includes a Sendgrid integration as well. This gives Multipub users the opportunity to design attractive forms and track whether the email was delivered or opened.
Suspending, Canceling, or Writing Off Orders
Automating invoices and statements can help increase cashflow, but our system goes a step further to support your collection efforts. If a payment isn’t received in a timely manner, Multipub’s policies will prompt the order to automatically be suspended and then canceled. A suspended status means the order still shows as owing, but it is no longer served. In contrast, a canceled status means the order has been canceled, and the A/R has been written off. The portion of the order that was served can either be posted to bad debt or taken out of income, based on your system policies.
Securing Payments to Increase Cash Flow
Once payment is received, the payment can be easily applied to the order in our payment entry software. Payments can be entered in many different ways to speed processing. They can be applied by subscriber, invoice, or Bill To. You may even choose to print a barcode on the invoice and then, scan it to make the payment entry even faster.
Reducing A/R with Recurring Billing
With Multipub, companies can reduce their A/R by taking credit card payments online. We offer integrations with many different credit card processors and can also perform recurring billing to automatically charge credit cards on a monthly, quarterly or another schedule based on your business’s preferences. Automatically collecting payments via recurring billing is a simple way to reduce your A/R while increasing sales and cash flow.
Managing Your Cash Flow with Accounts Receivable Reports
Multipub posts all transactions to the general ledger (GL), which means users can see the activities that increased and decreased their A/R balance at any time. Sales and debit memos increase your accounts receivable, whereas cancelations and payments decrease your A/R. This valuable business intelligence helps companies better understand how they’re performing and allows them to more accurately forecast how closely they are following their projections and budgets for the year.
We have included several reports in our platform to make this important data easily accessible. For example, the Aging Report shows all A/R and how long the money has been owed to you. The GL report includes all journal entries to the A/R GL accounts, and the month-end balancing reports display any activities have occurred to cause the accounts receivable account to be out of balance.
