How SME's Can Better Manage their Cash Flow

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Ezidedebit pty ltd

(PRWEB) September 19, 2012

Founded in 1998, "Ezidebit" currently processes over two million transactions per month on behalf of more than 10,000 businesses across multiple industry sectors including childcare, health and fitness, property management and tourism.

"Our clients base is predominantly SMEs," explains Ezidebit's CEO Charlie Holland. "We do have some large corporate clients, but they can typically be broken down into smaller SME-like units, such as large groups of childcare centres, or a big gym company. We do a lot of work for franchises."

But Ezidebit's service isn’t exclusive to the SME market. "We have personal trainers on our books who are sole traders doing very small volumes of transactions, right up to big corporates. Our revenues are based on a 'per transaction' set fee, however, so we do try to target areas where we can get some transactional volume," says Holland.

Traditionally, those areas have been childcare and health and fitness centres, but the system works across any business that receives regular repeat payments. "It definitely benefits any business that has a recurring client base, rather than companies that receive one-off payments," says Holland. "If you sell t-shirts, for example, that's not really our space. But if you have clients that use your service again and again, or a subscription-based model, those are areas that we can help with."

Ezidebit has expanded its offering in recent years to include a range of payment options, but its core business remains the same. "The company is still based around the direct debit function," explains Holland. "And by direct debit I mean the ability to take money from someone's bank account or credit card and deposit it into a business account."

"But we've grown our capabilities to handle other payment options such as BPAY. We became a master biller for BPAY, which means that we can issue BPAY numbers on behalf of a business. We've also moved into phone payments, where you can dial a 1300 number and pay an outstanding invoice over the phone using credit card. We also offer a similar service for online payments."

By expanding its range in this way Ezidebit has been able to market itself as a complete payment solution provider. "We've moved towards more of a 'solution sell' in the past 12-18 months," says Holland, and through that solution we provide cash flow mechanisms for business. We try to educate our clients on how our facilities can help them. One of the immediate benefits of moving clients on to paying by direct debit, for instance, is that the business gains far greater control over when they receive revenue."

Moving clients on to direct debit payments means a business can manage by exception, so you only have to monitor those payments that fail, instead of having to keep an eye on all the invoices that are owing. "We don’t help businesses chase late payments as such, but we give them the tools to identity those late payments quickly," explains Holland. "When you have a large volume of your clients paying by direct debit you have a much higher collection rate."

Ezidebit's free online portal allows clients to self manage their payments where they chose to schedule fixed or variable payments to suit their fee structure. This, along with Ezidebit's customized reporting on a daily basis makes the whole process more manageable.

If you would like more information on this topic, or to schedule an interview with Charlie Holland, please call Katrina Boltman on 07 3124 5533 or email katrina.boltman@ezidebit.com.au

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