CharterNet simplifies bank upload and payment scheduling

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‍About CharterNet

CharterNet is an award-winning Australian business advisory firm founded in 2011. Established as an advisory leader to emerging and fast-growth businesses, CharterNet prides itself on being the most people-centric advisory firm in Australia.

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The Challenge: Setting up delegated user access and payment approvals workflows

Ernest Chunge, the Divisional Head of Outsourced Finance Function Service at CharterNet, oversees a team of 20 who help medium-sized businesses run their finance team from being bookkeepers to financial control.

As a team, they strove to achieve a smooth accounts payable and payments approval process with clients. But the inability to set up secure delegated user access and approval workflows with individual banks has limited how much team members can delegate and when they can go on leave.

“The constant struggle of always needing to chase somebody to approve a payment on a bank or making sure that person is available and not in a meeting... it’s a life that we had and have accepted.

I personally walk around with numerous bank dongles or apps on my phone. Every client has a different bank, and every bank requires a different way of logging in before we can upload payments for client approval. We have a large bookkeeping team and delegation to the appropriate team member is key to success and efficient engagement. The impact is just that accounts payable is generally not fun or easily scalable across unique clients.”

The CharterNet team began searching for a solution that would help them handle repetitive work and overcome their current approvals hurdles with multiple banks, in order to increase efficiency and profitability. It was then at this point they came across Paytron’s unique features that would help them run payments end-to-end more efficiently in one platform and streamline approvals workflows with clients through setting up individual user access.

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The Solution: Removing frustration from payments

CharterNet cites two main reasons for switching to Paytron for accounts payables:  

1. The ability to simplify the bank upload and payment scheduling process

“The thing that got me interested was the one-to-one bank connection to Xero’s bills ‘awaiting payments’ section. The idea that I could just hit ‘pay’ for an already approved invoice right out of the software without needing to do a separate bank upload bank approval email to a client. That is amazing! I can just live in Paytron. Then I learned that I can connect it to my payroll software and schedule payments there as well, plus clients can fund the Paytron account with an Amex.”

2. The ease of setting up user access and workflows by yourself without going back and forth with an account manager

“I can invite everybody on my team that’s already on the Xero file into the Paytron file and set the workflows and security myself. You got me at the start with AP but when I logged in and started using it, I thought - wow, this could be centre of my workflow in many ways.”  

Another advantage the team observed with using Paytron was the continual improvement of its OCR capabilities, and its potential to replace other apps in a typical accounting stack.  

Now that CharterNet is using Paytron in their AP process, Ernest says it’s night and day, especially as it saves them more time and costs. It has also reduced the number of emails they receive from clients which reflects how everything is humming smoothly in the background. “By and large, everybody’s impressed with how easy it is to do payments. The act of getting things paid is happening much faster and much of the work is being done securely and appropriately delegated to a team member.”

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When asked about the Paytron experience

“Getting clients onboarded to platforms is one of the hardest things. That’s been one of the best experiences with Paytron – you have actively supported me in getting my clients onto the platform, particularly KYC which is a pain with banking and holding our hands through that, treating my clients like your clients.

The biggest fear with making recommendations is I’m trusting you to treat my clients well and I think the Paytron experience has been excellent. So I’ve enjoyed the app but very much the onboarding experience has been the keeper.”