One of the most pressing issues facing small-business owners today is this: “How do I get paid faster?” Over the last several years, millions of business owners, including freelancers, solo businesses and home businesses have turned to Web-based invoicing services to improve the payment process and get money in the door faster.
Now financial giant American Express is joining the fray. Amex OPEN, the company’s small-business division, just launched AcceptPay (www.acceptpay.com), a nifty new online invoicing and payment solution that aims to help business owners improve cash flow at a time when customers are taking longer to pay.
AcceptPay is available to anybody – you don’t have to be an American Express cardholder, or accept their cards. There’s a free AcceptPay Lite version (invoicing only) that you can try out before committing to the full-featured service that costs $20 per month and has no setup fee.
AcceptPay combines features offered by many other services into one of the most complete invoicing and collections solutions available anywhere. It offers simple, automated invoicing and tracking, along with multiple payment options – including major credit cards, bank transfers, e-checks and even cash – that can make it easier for your customers to pay.
Amex partnered with online payment-solution provider PaySimple to design and build AcceptPay, and included features recommended by business owners who participated in a test phase. There’s a short video explaining how the service works, available at the OpenForum.com home page.
Benefits include these:
• Faster payments. Customer payments are deposited directly into a linked bank account that you designate.
• Choice of payment types. Your customers get to choose from different payment types that work best for them.
• Invoicing efficiency. You can create and send invoices, as well as track and organize invoices, payments and outstanding receivables online – through a single, Web-based portal.
• Better financial control. AcceptPay lets you track and view invoices and receivables via automated or custom reports that you design. All such records can be integrated to QuickBooks.
• Ease of use. Since AcceptPay is a Web-based “cloud computing” solution, there’s no software to download or install on your own computer. •
Daniel Kehrer can be reached at editor@business.com.
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