Accelerate Brewery Cash Flow by Automating Payment Processing

Credit card processing fees are often one of the most costly inefficiencies in a brewery.

Keep reading to discovery the ways that your brewery can keep more of its hard earned profits, instead of giving them away to credit card companies. 

Streamline Payment Processing for Your Brewery

Inefficient invoicing processes are a problem for breweries because:

• A lot of taproom managers still use cheques as their primary payment method

• There are often multiple parties involved in settling a basic invoice, making it labour-intensive

• Customers can stretch out payment terms resulting in slow cash flow for breweries

• Credit card companies suck hard-earned profits from breweries

If your customers don't pay on time, you might need to rely on outside financing to create new product to sell. If your payment processing costs are too high, you'll lose profits on each sale unnecessarily. 

Keep reading and we will explore payment solutions that your brewery could use to balance cashflow and payment fees. 

Solutions for Breweries - How Can You Get Paid Faster?

Getting paid on time is crucial for successful breweries.

Breweries can speed up payment by empowering sales people to take payment at time of sale or delivery, or through automatic payment terms. This doesn't just speed up cashflow, it also reduces administrative work throughout the brewery. 

Below are some best practices that could improve your invoicing process, and some tips on what to consider as you decide which solution is right for your brewery.

Use an Electronic Invoicing System for Brewery B2B Payments

A simple solution is to take credit card payments manually, or over the phone, using a point of sale system to process payments. This results in faster payment than relying heavily on cheques.

A downfall of processing cards manually through your point-of-sale system is that these systems often charge high fees for 'card not present' transactions. These fees are often as high as 5-6% of invoice value.

Use QuickBooks Payments when Invoicing Customers

Electronic invoicing and payment methods have been proven to shorten customer payment times, and they are labour efficient. 

A quick fix to improving cashflow is to have brewery sales teams invoice customers through QuickBooks, using QuickBooks payments to collect payment seamlessly. 

However, invoicing through QuickBooks may not be ideal if your company wants to keep certain data confidential. If you work with external sales reps who work with multiple other breweries, you may not want to provide access to the sensitive financial data that is available in QuickBooks.

Another aspect to consider is whether or not your tool allows you to set up autopay. Setting up automatic payments can help your brewery thrive, while elevating your customer experience. Shop around for a tool that allows you to set up automatic payments and say goodbye to the days of chasing down accounts receivables.

Use a Third Party Software to Automate Credit Card Processing

Third party card processing systems that integrate with QuickBooks can help you avoid high fees, while maintaining data security. Some of the options available are:

• Stripe
  
• BenjiPays
  
• Square

Systems like these provide timely reminders to customers, and often attempt repeat processing if payments are initially declined, meaning you spend less time chasing down payments. However, these services don't always integrate seamlessly with your entire brewery system which can result in more administrative work.

Integrate Payment Processing into your POS and Brewery Management Software

Brew Ninja is proud to announce that our product now supports direct invoicing and payments with a secure encryption through Square. Using this payment solution means you'll eliminate administrative work, reduce errors, accelerate cash flow, and reduce costs. 

Create and send invoices to your customers seamlessly. Customers can then pay online, or through autopay, and payment statuses will be automatically updated in both Brew Ninja and your accounting system. This allows you to fully integrate your brewery POS system,  brewery management software, and accounting platform.

Other benefits of using Brew Ninja Direct Invoicing include:

• The ability to customize invoices for multiple languages
• Flat rate of 2.9% with no hidden fees
• Customers can pay with virtually any type of card while still receiving the same rates
• Real-time reporting on accounts receivables 

Brew Ninja direct invoicing not only saves your brewery time processing payments, it also increases brewery profits giving your brewery a competitive edge. 

A Remedy to Accelerate Cashflow for Your Brewery

Your brewery has made an investment in equipment, staff, and raw materials in order to make beer. But the ability to make great beer is reduced when customers don't pay their bills on time. Brew Ninja direct invoicing could be the tool you're looking for to streamline your brewery operations and accelerate cashflow. 

Cashflow is extremely important to breweries, 75% of Square invoices are paid within the day. As a result, Brew Ninja's direct invoicing, powered by Square, can significantly improve your cashflow.

Cashflow is important to your customers too. Restaurants will often buy more from breweries that give them favourable payment terms. With Brew Ninja's direct invoicing feature, customers can use virtually any type of payment card and get the same rate. Or your customers could pay in four interest free instalments over six weeks, using Afterpay. Your brewery gets paid immediately, and customers can pay the way they want to with several payment options available to them. It's a win, win.

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