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Why Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central users should use Chaser

Written by Sonia Dorais | 27 Apr, '21

Combining the functionality of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with Chaser’s proven ability to recover unpaid invoices, and reduce payment time, offers small business owners an unparalleled all-in-one enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.

Thankfully, connecting Chaser to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central can be done in five easy steps and data from your Business Central account can be synchronised into Chaser in just 2minutes. In this article, we’ll be illuminating the pivotal benefits of integrating the Chaser add-on into your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central account.

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, formerly known as Dynamics NAV, offers business owners a centralized end-to-end solution for managing all of their business processes, including their accounts receivable. 

Designed to be flexible and intuitive, Dynamics 365 Business Central can be adapted for use with any business and includes a huge range of functionality, including:

  •     Financial management
  •     Supply chain management
  •     Relationship management
  •     Human resource management
  •     Project & Resource management
  •     Warehouse management
  •     Service Order Management
  •     Manufacturing 

The primary benefit of using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is that it is a single, end-to-end solution for managing finances, operations, sales and customer service. As a premier enterprise resource planning platform, Dynamics 365 Business Central is used by more than 160,000 customers and is constantly growing and being upgraded.

Using Dynamics 365 Business Central allows small businesses to streamline their administration, using automation to spend less time on unprofitable tasks and more time growing their business. 

Able to be easily deployed into a public cloud, private cloud or on-premise, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is often the first step for small businesses looking to upgrade their entry-level accounting software and legacy ERP systems. 

Setting up Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is extraordinarily easy thanks to Microsoft’s RapidStart Services. RapidStart offers the following features to help you set up a new company on Dynamics 365 Business Central quickly and easily: 

  •     Configuration wizard
  •     Configuration worksheet
  •     Configuration packages
  •     Configuration templates
  •     Configuration questionnaire

What is Chaser?

Chaser is an innovative credit control solution that offers groundbreaking solutions to one of the most difficult questions facing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) around the world:

How do I get paid on time?

In the UK alone, SMEs are chasing a combined £50 billion in late payments and wasting a combined 900,000 hours a day trying to get paid for services and products they’ve already supplied.

In the UK alone, SMEs are chasing a combined £50 billion in late payments and wasting a combined 900,000 hours a day trying to get paid

 

Self-employed business professionals and small businesses are chasing an average of four outstanding invoices at any one time and the average amount owed per invoice is £8,500

The constant need to chase late invoices and the cash flow issues caused by unpaid invoices is a major contributor to around 50,000 small businesses going out of business each year. Consistent cash flow is vital to the survival of most SMEs and just a few late payments can put them in danger of becoming insolvent.

Chaser users can overcome the issue of late payments by getting paid an average of sixteen days sooner, recovering 80 per cent of their outstanding invoices through Chaser’s email chasing functionality alone and saving more than 60 hours a month in wasted time.

Chaser lets you do all of this without putting your vital customer relationships at risk and even includes aftercare options to help you strengthen those relationships.

What can Chaser do for your business?

Chaser is far more than just credit control software. While it can and will allow you to streamline your accounts receivable, it also has a host of other features, including:  

Automation with the human touch

Business process automation offers small business owners, who might not have a huge accounting team to rely on, the ability to streamline their accounting procedures. This means less time wasted on unproductive tasks, like chasing late invoices, and more time spent concentrating on growing your business.

Chaser’s automation features allow you to schedule email reminders that let your client know when an invoice will soon be sent, when it has been sent, and when it’s overdue.  Once an invoice is overdue, Chaser will automatically send out a series of reminder emails to encourage prompt payment.

Chaser’s automation features allow you to schedule email reminders that let your client know when an invoice will soon be sent, when it has been sent, and when it’s overdue.

 

Often, the downside of automation is that obviously automated emails are easier to ignore, but this is where Chaser specialises in combining the benefits of automation with the human touch.

All reminder emails appear to come from your normal email address. The email templates are easily editable to reflect your personal style and business branding. You can also schedule your invoice reminders to send at different times, even for the same customer, to avoid the bulk emailing that is so indicative of automation.

You can group multiple invoices into one reminder, to avoid bombarding your customer with emails. When you have been paid, an automatic “thank you for paying” email helps to build on your good customer relationships.

Dedicated Payment Portal

Every reminder sent through Chaser includes a link to a payment portal that is unique to each of your customers. Once your customer has accessed their unique payment portal, they can see a full history of their invoices, paid, unpaid, and upcoming, to facilitate prompt payment.

To give your customers the widest possible range of payment options, the dedicated payment portal supports payment through the usual credit and debit card options.

To give your customers the widest possible range of payment options, the dedicated payment portal supports payment through the usual credit and debit card options.

 

Both you and your customer can access and download all relevant documentation in one place using a dedicated summary page, which saves you time by eliminating the need to re-send documents, streamlining your invoicing process.

A centralised credit control hub

Combining all your accounts receivable and credit control activities into one place helps to streamline and simplify the process while also giving your access to critical information.

The Chaser receivables CRM collates all your chasing activity in one place, allowing you to build payment profiles for your customers, which leads to more effective credit control, and gain insight into your aged receivables.

No one likes to be repeatedly reminded to pay an invoice they’ve already paid, so Chaser previews which contacts will be included in your next reminder to make sure they are all going to the right contacts.

No one likes to be repeatedly reminded to pay an invoice they’ve already paid, so Chaser previews which contacts will be included in your next reminder to make sure they are all going to the right contacts.

 

To further ensure you are not chasing any paid invoices, your Chaser account is  synced with your accounting system. This allows Chaser to automatically reconcile all payments transactions and make sure that payment reminders are stopped after payment has been made.

Effective outsourced credit control

Effective credit control is the best way to ensure you get paid in full and on time. However, not every business has the luxury of hiring an in-house credit controller. Chaser allows you to outsource your credit control to their professional team for a fraction of the price of hiring full-time staff.

Our experienced and effective team works with you and your customers to help you achieve consistent cash flow and reduce your overall debtor days. We understand how important the relationships you have built with your customers are and we’re here to help you get paid while improving on those relationships.

Any invoice queries are handled immediately by our experienced team in a friendly, customer-first manner, or, in certain circumstances, referred to you for appropriate action to make sure we’re always treating your customers just the way you would.

Our workflow is entirely transparent, so you’ll be able to use Chaser to track and view all activities pertaining to your credit control, including records of all the communications we’ve sent your clients.

A new approach to debt collections

While Chaser’s award-winning credit control platform helps our customers recover around 80 percent of their outstanding debt through email chasing alone, they also provide a solution for those 20% of more challenging late payment situations. 

Having surveyed our customer, we came to understand that most small businesses would rather write off bad debt than risk their customer relationships in the hands of aggressive debt collectors. To give our users another option, we created Chaser Collections, a new way of thinking about debt collection.

Contrary to traditional agencies, our professional debt collections team is nonaggressive and will not harass your customer. Instead, we use polite persistence to get you the money you are owed. Our team works as mediators between you and your customers, reaching a payment arrangement that works for everyone.

There is also no long and complicated handover. All the details of the outstanding invoice are already held in Chaser, so you can escalate it to us in just two clicks. Our pricing model is completely transparent, you will receive an in-app quote for our services before you commit to them.

Chaser’s new take on debt collections means you no longer have to just write off bad debt and can instead get paid without needing to burn any bridges, or lose any future business, along the way.

Combining Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Chaser puts award-winning credit control and an enterprise resource planning solution right at your fingertips.