Company Announcement - SMEs are looking for four things from their business systems and payment solutions - 24/7 availability, access to data wherever they are, and seamless secure integration within their business applications and third-party apps and services. That’s according to Charles Pittaway, Managing Director at Sage Pay, who says that small and mid-sized businesses in South Africa are looking for solutions that help them to become more efficient by automating manual processes, to easily manage movement of money across the payment lifecycle, and to align their businesses better with the demands of a mobile and digital economy.

“Our discussions with customers shows that enterprises want to be able to access business data and services wherever they are, from any device, and at any time of the day and night,” says Pittaway. “Furthermore, they want their business software to be integrated to increase automation and ensure accuracy of their data. And finally, they want to easily be able to bridge into third-party services such as payment gateways and online banking from their financial and payroll systems.” To answer these requirements, Sage Pay has been working on enhancing its payment solutions and improving their integration with Sage accounting and payroll products, says Pittaway. By integrating the Sage Pay platforms tightly with Sage Pastel Accounting, Sage Pastel Payroll and Sage VIP, Sage Pay is able to help its clients streamline the movement of money within their businesses.

Sage Pay’s solutions include an e-commerce gateway, salary and creditor payments, debit order collections and risk reports. These solutions can be purchased separately or as an integrated solution that draws together an SME’s payment needs into a single platform. Now, complete integration of this platform with payroll and accounting software allows SMEs to more easily manage the flow of money in and out of their business, says Pittaway.

Some of the benefits of integration between Sage’s payment, accounting and payroll solutions include:

• The ability to issue invoices directly from the accounting software.
• More options for customers to pay, including Sage Pay’s Pay Now offering.
• Payments from one single point of access, and without needing export EFT files.
• Easier, automated reconciliation of invoices and statements with amounts paid and received.
• Reduced transaction fees by processing salary payments directly from the payroll software.
• Automated bank account validations and ID number verifications from within payroll and accounting software.
• Checks on employees from multiple credit bureaus, providing information on judgments, default payments and fraud listings.

“SMEs told us that they want to improve their cash flow, manage risk more rigorously, transact securely, ensure they have accurate data about business transactions, and save time and money,” Pittaway says. “We took these requirements as the starting point for our value proposition. With our solution, they can handle a transaction from origination and execution through to reconciliation in a single, streamlined process. SMEs have long dreamt about this level of process integration, and now it is a reality.”