The Advantages of Integrating NetSuite & GoCardless
When analysing 2023’s consumer trends and spending behaviour, Forbes reported a total of $5.7 trillion in online payments in the retail e-commerce arena alone. Experts suggest that value will increase to $8 trillion in the coming years whilst the rapidly growing subscription economy is predicted to reach a market value of $1.5 trillion by 2027.
In short, not only the way we pay for things, but how we expect to purchase and consume goods and services, looks set to continually evolve towards online payments and subscriptions. This means that businesses had better be ready.
With NetSuite’s status secure as the go-to finance and ERP solution for scaling businesses (supporting the likes of Spotify, Motorway, and Deliveroo, to name a few), and GoCardless being one of the fastest-growing and most deployed payment platforms globally (supporting 85,000+ clients), it seems only natural that they should work well together to provide a seamless, secure solution.
(Spoiler alert: GoCardless for NetSuite by MacroFin does exactly this.)
In this article, we discuss what the most positive impacts of integrating GoCardless to NetSuite are, beyond providing a slicker payment experience for your customers:
- Scaling transaction volume without increasing AR costs.
- Increasing accuracy for all stakeholders at every stage.
- Improving cashflow, reporting and visibility.
- Removing risk when managing customer payment details.
- Creating a better environment for your team.
Scaling transaction volume without increasing AR costs
This is probably the biggest advantage to NetSuite customers.
The reason being, there are two key parts to the process which just become increasingly more manual the more transactions you process:
- The initiation of the payment request: The instruction to GoCardless to collect the payment from the customer.
- The collection and allocation of the payment: Receiving payments, allocating them to open transactions, and/or reconciling the bank account.
In the absence of an integration, what we most commonly see is that NetSuite customers basically default to using GoCardless as the primary payment function, with NetSuite becoming a repository for a summarised payment file.
This is understandable, and it does provide the freedom to scale transaction volumes without increasing operational processes. However, the trade-off is that you miss out on critical client, transaction, and financial insights in NetSuite as a result.
In our experience, the impact of this is amplified by the fact that businesses using NetSuite normally sell to and engage clients across multiple channels and touchpoints.
For example, GoCardless may be utilised to manage the initiation and collection of subscription payments, however the subscription may also be supplemented by the sale of additional ad-hoc products or services, which the client themselves may buy via an e-commerce site, client portal, account manager, telesales, or a combination of the above.
For the customer, the experience may become inconsistent if they receive different bills at different times. Internally, it means that some client and sales data is completely in NetSuite, whilst other data is largely invisible to sales or service functions.
By integrating NetSuite and GoCardless, you can capture customer and order data (from any channel) in NetSuite and automatically initiate the request for payment to GoCardless. Then, seamlessly bring payment data back into NetSuite at a transaction- and line-level, with no manual entry, to allow for allocation and reconciliation.
This ensures that NetSuite remains the primary business system and that all client and transaction data starts from and ends in NetSuite.
Thus, you can process tens, hundreds, or thousands of transactions per month whilst providing a consistent experience for your customers and gaining complete visibility of your sales performance, all without the need to increase your Accounts Receivable function.
Increasing accuracy for all stakeholders at every stage
If NetSuite and GoCardless are integrated, it ensures that data only needs to be entered once. This means that the opportunity for error is drastically reduced.
Increased accuracy is just one of the many by-products of removing multiple touchpoints from the process. The most important outcome of this factor is probably improved security, which we cover in more detail in a later section. But, for the time being, let’s focus on accuracy.
With improved accuracy, everyone wins:
- Your customers: There is less, or no, risk of them being billed the incorrect amount or for an incorrect order. We all know mistakes happen, but if you receive a surprise bill, or worse, an incorrect payment is actually taken from your account because of a manual error, the consequences could be catastrophic.
- Your team: Quite simply, it removes duplicate data entry for them, removing the possibility of making a mistake and gives them one less thing to worry about. Who doesn’t want that
- Your business: You know that your billing figures and allocations are always correct – so you can close periods quicker
,and get your reporting and analysis done. Plus, because GoCardless also collects the payment, you know what your cash will be and when.
Improving cashflow, reporting and visibility
Following on from the final point of the previous section, your visibility and reporting capabilities are drastically improved due to the efficiency of data entry and eradication of human error. This means that your data is in the system quicker and more accurately, and you can move on to analysis in the knowledge that transactions will be automatically processed through to collection with no additional work.
Beyond the efficiency of creating reports, one of the biggest advantages for businesses utilising GoCardless is improving cashflow.
Due to the fact GoCardless actually collects the payment, the risk of a customer delaying payment or not paying at all is drastically reduced.
GoCardless cites a 97.3% success rate in collecting payments at the first attempt.
So, in addition to the increased accuracy of data cited in the previous section, you can now report and forecast much more confidently, knowing that your payments will not only be received, but will be received in less than 30 days.
Removing risk when managing customer payment details
Unfortunately, statistics show that fraud, particularly relating to card payments, online payments, and online banking are continuing to increase at an alarming rate, with BDO reporting a 200% increase between 2020 and 2022, and the UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2024 detailing a further 53% from 2022 to 2023.
Thankfully, GoCardless enables businesses of all sizes to securely collect and process online and offline payments without needing to store client details.
Beyond that, by integrating NetSuite and GoCardless, you remove any opportunity for staff or internal teams to access or interfere with client details or company payments.
Less touchpoints means less access for dangerous hands. So, your client data is safe, as is your business’ cash.
Creating a better environment for your team
The long and short of this section is that it’s no fun to sit and type data into a system. Even more so when that data has already been typed in at least one other place by at least one other person.
If you’re serious about scaling your business, you need smart people who are engaged and empowered to think and add value to your processes and analysis.
By integrating NetSuite and GoCardless you remove a monotonous error-prone task, whilst simultaneously increasing and improving the data your team can work with to improve the performance of your business.
Conclusion
In summary, transactions both in the B2B and B2C space look set to move increasingly into the online and digital payment sphere.
As such, businesses need to take stock of their systems and processes to ensure they are best placed to not only meet the requirements of their customers, but also to be able to scale at the rate required without disproportionately increasing operational costs or requiring staff to carry out unsecure, antiquated tasks.
NetSuite and GoCardless have forged their place at the heart of digital commerce for scaling companies and, together, they provide a perfect platform to help businesses take advantage of the shift towards online and subscription payments.
GoCardless for NetSuite by MacroFin is the first off-the-shelf solution to offer the integration, has been developed based on real user requests, and is the preferred integration solution of GoCardless.
See it in action!
Join our upcoming live webinar where you’ll see our GoCardless for NetSuite integration in action.
Date: 4th September 2024
Time: 2PM (BST)
This webinar will include a live demo, followed by Q&A with our expert team.
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