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Article: Are You Tracking Accounts Receivables?

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EBPP Implementation

This proposal assumes the following: you will continue to use your existing processes for mailing invoices, and as clients begin receiving electronic invoices, you will reduce the number of customers who will need to receive a paper invoice via U.S. mail. If you continue to receive paper checks, you will process these as you do today.

During the introduction of EBPP, there may be a transition period where both emailed (electronic delivery from NextBill EBPP) and mailed (paper delivery from your current provider/process) of invoices will be sent simultaneously. You will want to create an enrollment process to get your existing customers to sign up for EBPP (you may even provide an incentive to get your customers to move away from paper). You will stop mailing invoices and eliminate the expense associated as soon as your customers adopt the electronic delivery method. Given all the benefits to you for moving to EBPP, you will want to promote this service to obtain quick adoption rates.

A team of financial and e-commerce systems professionals will provide customer support throughout implementation and ongoing operations. The entire NextBill EBPP process only requires a few simple steps:

1. Bill Creation and Presentment
NextBill receives customer billing information from the company’s Accounts Receivable or billing system. The system generates billing information in the format selected by each customer (HTML, standard text, or Microsoft Word) and sends each customer an email bill. The email bill can also contain company information and advertising. Optionally, customers can save or print email bills for their records.

2. Bill Payment
To pay the bill, a customer simply clicks on the “Schedule Payment” hyperlink displayed on the email bill, which links the customer directly to a secure payment screen on the company’s web site. The bill payment page displays the customer’s account number, payment amount, and due date. The customer can immediately authorize the bill, or has the option to change the payment amount and effective date.

3. Payment Processing
NextBill receives the customer’s payment transaction and either warehouses or processes it according to the payment’s effective date. One day before the effective date, the system creates an ACH Fed File that contains transactions to debit customers’ accounts at their financial institutions. This file is transmitted (deposited) to the company’s financial institution. The financial institution processes the file. The ACH transactions are transmitted via the Federal Reserve System to the customers’ financial institutions. At the same time, NextBill creates a paid items database for export into the company’s billing system to update their customers’ accounts.

EBPP Customer Enrollment

• Customer Signup: It is easy for customers to sign up for EBPP service. They can self-activate EBPP services by simply accessing the company’s EBPP web site, entering validation information, and creating a customer profile. Optionally, the company can establish customer profiles through a paper application and data entry process. The customer profile contains all the customer information needed to begin sending electronic bills and processing electronic payments.

• Enrollment Charges: Your customers will not incur any direct NextBill charges for EBPP enrollment.

• Enrollment Process: There are two options for customer enrollment - self-activation or enrollment (data entry by your staff) using sign up forms.

• Customers could self-activate by accessing your EBPP enrollment web site and completing a Customer Profile screen: email address, financial institution name, ABA/Transit routing number, and financial institution account number. Customers would have to enter validation information, e.g., account number, before reaching their individual Customer Profile screens.

• Use paper enrollment forms where customers would complete these forms and send them in with the payments. You would create customer profiles via a NextBill data entry function. The entry forms would contain customer payment information listed in the previous paragraph.

• Validation and Pre-Notification upon creation (or change) of a Customer Profile, NextBill sends an email to the new or changed email address. The system also creates an ACH Pre-Note transaction to validate account information at the customer’s financial institution.