NetSuite is rolling out updates to help automate more of the payment cycle, including streamlined invoices, bank reconciliations and more, according to a company blog post.
The firm noted that, while the pandemic has driven many business functions to become digital, there have still been holdouts in terms of things taking longer to complete. Functions like posting transactions, generating invoices and reconciling accounts are still time-consuming, particularly because of the pandemic’s difficulties.
“In the wake of the global pandemic, many accounting professionals are struggling to keep up with normal levels of productivity,” the blog said. “With many businesses still requiring employees to work remotely, accountants confront technology hurdles, including network bandwidth constraints and the functionblog al limitations of common accounting packages that are ultimately a drain on out-of-office productivity.”
NetSuite’s modifications include a feature to group multiple invoices into one lump of them, intended to help reduce the time it takes to issue invoices for every order by bunching them together. The feature cuts down on the work for customers making multiple orders.
In addition, the updates cut down on bank reconciliation by automating the process, letting users create and post transactions automatically from imported bank data. That reduces risk from the old days in which transactions had to be entered manually every time, the blog said.
Also, the upgrade does away with older ways of dealing with inter-company transactions, in which the new AP/AR netting lets users combine their mutual balances through a netting statement, and then settlements are created for the selected transactions for both parties. That has the effect of saving time by reducing the number of open transactions at a company.
The AvidXchange SuiteApp, built to operate in NetSuite, also recently added new updates to provide new insights into transactions and opportunities for savings.
Such changes come at a time when the pandemic is exposing weaknesses in lots of companies’ existing AR systems, PYMNTS recently reported. Crystal Stephens, vice president and corporate receivables product manager for Comerica Bank, told us that some firms are finding their processes can take “up to four times” as long if done from home as opposed to in-office.
(This article has been updated to clarify that Netsuite has updated its existing product rather than launching a new one.)
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