In a climate where efficiency is everything, it’s important to know if your “integrated” payment processing system is actually integrated in the ways that add meaningful value to your business.

As Laurie McCabe points out in IT Business Edge, vendors often offer “different pieces of the payments pie,” but few offer the whole thing in one recipe. What are you getting with a truly integrated payment solution?

The most important thing is time. With an integrated payment system (like Chargent), you’re cutting out redundancies. Your employees’ time is both precious and finite, and there are better uses for it than credit card verification and payment reconciliation.

Just as importantly, you’re also getting insight. When you integrate your payment processing with your accounting — the way Chargent can — you enable the kind of data and reporting needed to assess performance, recognize opportunities, and chart out the future quicker. And when it’s all already integrated with your Salesforce instance, you get insights you can act upon, right where your employees’ work already lives.

When it comes to choosing an integrated payment solution, McCabe has some questions to think about.

  • What kind of payments are you handling? Credit card, ACH, wire transfer –  you’ll want an integrated solution that handles it all.
  • What does the future look like? The billing and invoicing landscape is changing, especially with new payment options like same-day ACH and person-to-person networks growing rapidly. Your business probably is too; more and more businesses make the smart move to subscription billing every day. Whatever solution you invest in, make sure you’re thinking about the long-term.
  • How much automation are you getting? You’re going to want a system that can pre-authorize, accept, and decline payments automatically. How about receipts? Is the system able to both send email receipts and alert accounting or your fulfillment system?
  • How much security are you getting? If you’re in a subscription billing business, you need to be able to securely encrypt data, and store payment tokens for easy reusability.
  • What do you want your payment data integrated with? Accounting is the most obvious, but when it comes to cutting out redundancies and easing the process, sales will also want something that makes invoicing efficient and reliable.

There’s a lot to think about when searching for a truly integrated payment processing system that’s going to take your billing process far into the future.

Luckily, Chargent checks all the right boxes. Chargent takes payments online and in-person, recording the transactions directly into Salesforce. It works for recurring billing at various intervals, and features a fully customizable payments system that will work with any business process as part of Salesforce. And Chargent is safe, with always-on encryption, PCI compliance tools and the security of Salesforce built in.