Business operations have only evolved to be more demanding. The internet, smart phones, the cloud — all of it has come with the expectation that we are always able to do more, faster. Your organization likely handles hundreds to thousands of digital financial transactions weekly, if not more. Doing this manually is not only time-consuming, but error prone. Manual entry methods can also break your PCI compliance. Thankfully, this is one area where it’s easy to put modern technology, like credit card processing, to work for you and take something off your very full plate.
In fact, 89% of companies are still turning to ERP for improving their accounting, as a recent survey will attest. Having a system that seamlessly processes your credit card payments and manage other areas of finance through automation sounds like a dream come true, and Microsoft Business Central is certainly one option up to the task (with a little outside help!).
Why It’s Beneficial to do Credit Card Processing in Business Central
For a credit card processing solution, you want something that will integrate directly with your ERP. With Microsoft’s Business Central, while this functionality isn’t built in, it’s simple enough to integrate. The Open APIs have left the door open for plenty of third-party integrations, like eBizCharge (more on that later!) that can meet your payment needs. That makes it a great fit for SMBs seeking an all-in-one ERP solution to streamline workflows and scale.
What you’ll end up with is a user-friendly and easily configurable credit card processing platform that you can tailor to the needs of smaller organizations with simpler business processes. That all ties in nicely with the suite of essential functionalities within the ERP software for finance management, sales, purchasing, inventory, and project management.
Streamlining the Payment Process
The most obvious benefit when working with Business Central is the streamlined payment collection and reconciliation through payment links and/or a branded customer portal. That effectively eliminates the need for manual entry and will save time for payment processing and logging while also reducing the need to waste time tracking down human errors (like double entries…) after the fact.
Through the automation of invoicing and receipt issuing, you can enhance cash flow and accounts receivable management, taking the administrative burden off your accountants and CFOs.
Better Insights from Real-Time Data
Data is almost as integral to businesses as money, so access to real-time financial data is crucial for your decision-makers. With a credit card processing integration set-up within Business Central, you have complete transparency into your transactions, as soon as they happen. That removes bottlenecks in decision-making, allowing your business to stay flexible with comprehensive financial analysis and facilitates strategic planning that can drive growth.
Security Improvements
45% of businesses had third-party-related disruptions, according to one recent cyber threat survey, meaning you are at risk of a data breach at any point. What’s more, without a secure credit card payment process, you risk losing PCI compliance.
Thankfully, out of the box in Business Central you have encryption, tokenization, and strict adherence to the PCI Compliance standards. While protecting your sensitive customer data from fraud, you protect your business from the legal ramifications of a data breach or loss from downtime. Ultimately, better security leads to customer confidence.
(Not So) Surprise Benefit: Happier Customers
Whether you’re working with a CRM like Dynamics 365 as well or not, Business Central can still foster an amazing customer experience. The above benefits all contribute to a faster, more secure and convenient experience for your clients. You also can provide the added flexibility of accepting debit and ACH payments at your clients’ convenience.
Plus, this can all be handled conveniently through payment links or by setting up a customer portal that makes the process more hands-off for your team. In the end, when your customers see that the system works well, they come to trust your business. That leads to a loyal client base, simply through providing better transactions.
Real World Results
One of our manufacturing clients needed to accept payments via credit card. Originally, they were taking these over the phone, but times were changing, and they required a PCI compliant process. What’s more, they wanted more convenience, with a solution where the end client could simply click a button on a sales order confirmation and pay the invoice without any manual interference on the provider’s end.
By working with us to move their operations over to Business Central, it ticked all the boxes, modernizing the way they work and offering secure, accurate payment options for their clients.
Optimize Your Payment Process in Business Central
To make sure you implement your system with ease and keep workflows running smoothly with your credit card processing, there are a few best practices we like to see put in place. We’re a little biased but most importantly, we recommend working with a partner who knows all of this already and can guide you through the process, training, and offers ongoing support to answer any questions that pop up.
Once you have that, there are 3 more recommendations:
- Put In Your Security Measures
As mentioned, data security is invaluable throughout the credit card transaction process. To help maintain your PCI compliance standards with Business Central, tokenization can be implemented. It replaces any sensitive card data with unique symbology that can still be used to securely identify essential data, but it’s encrypted during transit and at rest to prevent unauthorized access.Control is another big factor. Reports from Varonis show that employees have “access to 11 million files”, on average, with 60% of companies host to roughly “500 accounts with non-expiring passwords in place.” That is a lot of exposure to human error or weak points in security that strong access control measures can counteract. By taking time to assess and regularly audit who should have proper authority to access data limits risk of data breaches. - Completely Synchronized Modules
Real-time financial data is a nice-to-have that Business Central can provide if you properly sync your credit card processing module with your accounting module. That will let you set up the previously mentioned automation tools that can cut down on your time and errors. Plus, having that data stored in a central repository within Business Central will make it easier for authorized decision-makers to access and report on that financial data from a single source of truth. - Keeping Track of Financial Data
Within Business Central, you have more control over the visibility and reporting on your transactions. You can monitor a variety of data sets to pinpoint customer trends or fraudulent activity or anything in between. It will also let you track KPIs to find areas for improvement in your credit card payment process as needed, to boost efficiency or find ways to improve customer experiences. Better data tracking also feeds into security and maintaining compliance — it’s all connected!
The Right Integration Can Accelerate Your Payment Processing
So, as discussed, Business Central can handle credit card processing as-is. That said, integrating a payment processor like EBizCharge gives your team a user-friendly, simplified platform that makes it all easier by offering some extra bells and whistles.
It seamlessly syncs with the Dynamics 365 interface, so there’s minimal learning curve. You have access to an expedited cash flow with support for multiple payment gateways, like email pay links, credit card processing, access to your payment portal and more. It employs its own automation processes, so you can trust you’re getting error-free data. Speeding up the payment process, again, makes for happier customers. It also syncs a complete, accurate record of accounts receivable within your Business Central data warehouse. If you want to smooth out the entire payment experience for all users, look into adding EBizCharge
“Work smarter, not harder” goes the old adage, so, when implementing a credit card processing system, start by looking at those compatible with Business Central. As you can see, Microsoft has packed a lot into this powerhouse ERP software to make processing credit card payments faster, more secure, and easier to track and report on. If you’re thinking about implementing Microsoft Business Central fresh or moving over from Dynamics SL or GP, reach out to our team with any questions.
