An efficient accounts receivable (AR) workflow helps businesses avoid cash flow problems and ensures overall financial stability. Many accounts receivable platforms like Gaviti are designed to streamline AR processes like invoice processing and payment collection. These platforms also come with automation features to improve the productivity of AR teams and help them focus on more important tasks.
This article explores the pros and cons of Gaviti, an advanced AR automation solution for businesses. This platform comes with various features for following up on invoices, collecting payments, and gaining insights into the AR process. We’ll also discuss these features to help you decide if Gaviti is the right accounts receivable solution for your business.
What are the pros and cons of Gaviti?
Automation has become the norm in many aspects of business, and accounts receivable is no exception. With automation, businesses can deal with some of the biggest challenges of AR management. A Deloitte report, in particular, found that top challenges with AR activities include invoicing and billing errors and inconsistent follow-ups.
As a result of these obstacles, more businesses are turning to automation to improve the efficiency of accounts receivable workflows. For instance, another study found that 59% of businesses now heavily invest in digital transformation. Similarly, financial executives consider improved efficiency as the most significant benefit of automating routine manual tasks.
Source: Financial Executives International’s Current Financial Reporting Insights Conference
One way to jumpstart automation and digital transformation for accounts receivable workflows is to adopt an advanced AR automation tool. Through accounts receivable software like Gaviti, businesses can reduce the need for manual work in following up on invoices and collecting payments. The following sections discuss the pros and cons of Gaviti in more detail to help you learn more about the platform.
Overview of Gaviti
Gaviti is an accounts receivable software designed to streamline AR processes from start to finish. The platform comes with advanced features like automated workflows and AP assistants so businesses can speed up payment collections. As a result, businesses also benefit from a stable cash flow and an improved overall bottom line.
Aside from automation features for accounts receivable processes, Gaviti also comes with a built-in payment portal. This payment portal makes it easier for clients to pay their invoices, further speeding up the payments collection process. These features can also help reduce the number of outstanding invoices and, as a result, improves a business’ financial stability.
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Gaviti also tracks workflow metrics to ensure that AR teams can easily analyze patterns and gain data-driven insights into processes like client payment behavior. The platform’s dashboard also includes real-time data on metrics like delinquent customers, aging buckets, and messages sent to customers.
Moreover, for easier use, Gaviti seamlessly integrates with ERP software. The platform is designed to integrate with all ERP systems, making setup quick and easy.
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Key Features of Gaviti
- Automated AR workflows
- Customizable workflow rules
- Payment gateway
- Customer messaging
- Accounts payable assistant
- Payment forecasting
- Institutional collections knowledge base
- Real-time performance metrics
- Custom security policy
- Dynamic client risk scoring
- ERP integrations
Pros and Cons of Gaviti
Improved Cash Flow and Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) Performance
Gaviti comes with plenty of features that support businesses in achieving a steady cash flow and improving their DSO performance. One feature that helps with these goals is the platform’s smart workflows. Through the software, users can set up workflows and modify rules for setting due dates and notification emails.
As a result, the platform automatically sends emails to customers to remind them of outstanding invoices. This helps speed up the payment collection process and encourages on-time payments. These automated workflows also help businesses achieve lower DSO. Days sales outstanding measures the average number of days it takes for a business to receive payments for a sale. As such, low DSO indicates that the sale-to-payment cycle is shorter, so there are few delays in receiving payments.
Moreover, through AR automation, the platform helps decrease reserves and write-offs, which hurt your cash flow and bottom line.
Gaviti makes it easy for users to set up workflow rules for email reminders.
More Efficient Internal and External Collaboration
Through automation, Gaviti also ensures more efficient collaboration between teams. By automating workflows, businesses can standardize AR processes and minimize the risk of errors. Like other useful accounting tools, the platform also ensures that everyone is using the same workflows and helps ensure more efficient collaboration.
The platform also comes with an accounts payable (AP) assistant, which helps AR teams improve communication with clients and their corresponding sales account managers. Through this AP Assistant, businesses can more easily communicate with clients and find out why open invoices are being left unpaid.
To further improve communications with clients, Gaviti allows users to set up custom email reminders for clients with outstanding invoices. You can configure these messages to contain information on how to settle payments. This customization feature also allows businesses to set up and automatically deploy their own strategy for collecting late payments.
Having an automated reminder system in place can also help in improving customer engagement and prevent AR teams from having to manually track invoices.
Increased Control over AR Workflows
Another benefit of using Gaviti is that it improves the transparency of AR processes. The platform also gives you greater control over your business’ AR workflows. Similar to invoicing software, Gaviti allows users to set up a workflow that automatically and consistently sends invoices according to a schedule. In this way, AR teams don’t miss out on opportunities to collect payment.
Gaviti also improves visibility into AR processes through an institutional collections knowledge base. This knowledge base logs all collection activities into one central platform so everyone is always on the same page. The knowledge base also improves accountability, which helps ensure the long-term efficiency of AR workflows.
Some Gaviti users have expressed the need for more admin control, but the platform provides sufficient workflow control and visibility to support the success of various AR processes.
Gaviti’s dashboard displays a wide variety of relevant metrics, including DSO and outstanding invoices.
Accurate Data Tracking and Easy Data Analysis
Furthermore, Gaviti makes it easier for businesses to collect and analyze data related to accounts receivable. The platform tracks AR data in real-time so you can analyze it later and identify patterns that cause problems or determine success. Some important performance metrics that Gaviti tracks include total AR, DSO, outstanding invoices, and delinquent customers. All this data is displayed on the platform’s dashboard for easy access.
Gaviti also helps businesses predict future cash flows through payment forecasting. The platform monitors your business’ history of issued invoices to help AR professionals project invoice payments and come up with an accurate cash flow estimate.
Reduced Manual AR Processing
Gaviti also helps businesses benefit from the automation of financial processes. This automation makes it easier to manage AR processes and ensures that every bit of AR data can be found on Gaviti’s dashboard. The platform is also designed for seamless integrations with all types of ERP software, especially since the platform is ERP-agnostic.
All you have to do is upload your business’ aging data or outstanding invoices report to the platform then you can start setting up your automated payment collection process and messaging. Some users have reported that the setup can take longer than expected, but Gaviti provides a dedicated support agent for troubleshooting.
Moreover, another benefit of automated AR is that it saves your AR team from the time-consuming hassles of manual number crunching and invoice processing. In this way, AR teams can focus on more important tasks and boost overall productivity. While there have been some reports that the platform’s email triggers need some additional tweaking, the effort is well worth the benefits of automation.
Gaviti helps users import their open invoices into the platform.
Is Gaviti the right choice for your business?
Whether or not Gaviti is the perfect AR tool for your business depends on your business’ unique needs. The platform serves small and medium enterprises in a wide variety of industries, including B2B, technology, logistics, and manufacturing. Gaviti also comes with various features to help businesses try how AR automation can improve their cash flow and overall AR productivity.
Since some users have reported the lack of admin control features, Gaviti may be a better choice for organizations just starting out with AR automation. As the pros and cons of Gaviti show, the platform is also a good choice for AR professionals with some experience in setting up customized, automated workflows through software.
If you’re interested in learning more about what to expect in the accounting industry in the coming years, check out our article on the top 10 accounting software trends for 2022.
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