Before the advent of receivables invoice matching, within the lockbox industry the old way of thinking went that only retail lockbox clients could automate their receivables processing, while wholesale lockbox clients were relegated to more manual cash application methods. Fortunately, wholesale lockbox clients can now post their payments automatically while minimizing posting mistakes attributed to stale, missing or incorrect invoices.
Clients enrolled in our invoice matching service would simply periodically upload an open invoice file. As Lighthouse processes payments in the lockbox and captures invoice numbers, we would match those invoice numbers to the uploaded file. Matched payments are accepted, while unmatched payments get routed to exceptions for the client to repair.
With Lighthouse Payment Services receivables invoice matching, we can match payments to a single data point (example: invoice number), to multiple data points (such as member number, payment type, and share suffix) and even match on mutually exclusive data points (invoice number OR account number). Below are some of the ways our clients are using our receivables invoice matching service:
- Consistently ensure the bill-payer supplied invoice number on the payment matches an open and valid invoice number, cutting down on posting file import issues
- Route payments to multiple deposit accounts in the same lockbox all without a scanline or the need to issue dedicated remit addresses for each departmental unit.
- Determine if a payment is an overpayment / underpayment or determine if a payment is late and by how much and automatically route to exceptions any out of tolerance transactions for future review – even without a payment coupon
- Integrate trade credits in the underpay/overpay formula (example: 2/10 Net 30) and route to exceptions any payors attempting to take advantage of trade credits despite paying outside of the discount period
- Augment the outbound posting file to include data points not inherent in the payment (client name/address, order info, account info, etc) drastically cutting down on data entry costs
- For non-profit organizations running acquisition campaigns, pass back a file of new donor respondents for import into the donor database without the need for the N-P to key all the information
- Automatically convert old account numbers to new account numbers prior to writing to the posting file for billers who have renumbered bill payer account numbers
Receivables invoice matching increases posting accuracy and robustness of the posting file. It saves the wholesale lockbox client time and effort normally attributed to payment reconciliation and enables wholesale client to leverage exception item processing to boot. Retail clients can use it also as an additional means of payment validation.
We can design a solution to fit any client’s needs. If you’re a bank searching for ways to attract deposits, offering lockbox with receivables invoice matching to your cash management customers may be the answer Give us a call!