Automating AP & Payments in NetSuite: An intro to Zone Apps from Zone&Co

Our webinar series is back for 2023 and as is tradition, our partner delivering the session provides us with a guest blog to whet your appetite. On Thursday 19 January, Zone&Co’s VP of Sales for Expansion Apps, Jurian van Maanen, will be exploring automation of accounts payable and payment management processes in NetSuite with a demo of two Zone Apps.

You can register for the webinar and to receive the watch again link here or read on for Jurian’s insights into the challenge of time-consuming activity and the Apps which can eradicate manual AP and payment tasks from your finance team’s remit.

Traditionally, two of the most manually intensive and frustrating processes for any finance team are accounts payable (processing and storing supplier invoices) and reconciliations (bank, credit card, or PSP/payment gateway).

Why? Well firstly, both are, and always have been, universal accounting requirements – invoices have always been sent/received and paid, and payments have always need reconciled for both internal cash management as well as external auditing requirements.

It seems because these tasks have always been done manually, it is more acceptable or expected that these tasks are still completed manually.

Secondly, there are a number of complexities to both, not least the number of channels where data is delivered to finance teams (emails, letters, PDFs, .CSV files, on-screen statements etc.) which can make it feel difficult to just match ‘A’ to ‘B’ without someone taking a look at it.

The latter point is probably the most pertinent.

Until the last few years, in many cases, the technology available to finance users did not accelerate as quickly, nor was it as affordable, as the technology available to the other players in the process. For the specific examples addressed in this article, you only have to look at how much more complex the AP job became, almost overnight, when PDFs and emails came into play, never mind the evolution of EDI and e-Invoicing.

Likewise for payments, the relentless evolution of not only e-commerce, but omni-channel commerce, has wildly increased the volume and complexity of transactions which need to be reconciled by businesses. Card payments alone present a different challenge, but introduce multiple payment gateways, digital wallets, and split/subscription pricing alongside your other ‘traditional’ payment methods and you can see how quickly things can get out of hand.

That is until now, NetSuite users. In this article, we introduce two of Zone&Co’s leading and most widely deployed SuiteApps:

• ZoneCapture (formerly Scan & Capture)
• ZonePayments

ZoneCapture: Native Accounts Payable Automation for NetSuite

ZoneCapture (formerly Fast Four Scan & Capture) was originally launched in 2017 based on requests from various NetSuite customers for a solution which was:

• Native to NetSuite to ensure that all financial processes and documents were managed and visible within their core NetSuite system.
• Able to support existing custom fields, customisations, and workflow processes within NetSuite, rather than having them replaced or re-done in a new system.
• Designed to reduce the amount of processing required by their team.

Today, fulfilling the entire wish-list above and then some, ZoneCapture is used by 500+ NetSuite customers globally to eliminate manual data entry and improve processes throughout the entire procurement and AP functions of their businesses.

The end-to-end process will be explained during our webinar, but some of the most popular features of ZoneCapture are:

• Simple, automated creation of vendor bills and credits from email, PDF, or e-invoice.
• Automatic three-way matching, including a unique ‘traffic-light’ list view to show transaction by status.
• Split-screen view to allow users, approvers, and auditors to quickly view the original document with corresponding NetSuite transaction record side-by-side.
• AP Dashboard Portlet to show transaction numbers by status and stage.

ZonePayments: Stripe Integration & Other Payment reconciliations

Similar to ZoneCapture and all of the other Zone Apps, ZonePayments has evolved from real-world NetSuite user requirements and requests. With their Bank Reconciliation SuiteApp, Zone&Co has a history of automating reconciliations of bank and credit card statements for NetSuite users globally.

ZonePayments has been developed specifically to integrate NetSuite with payment service providers and automate the reconciliation of payments against corresponding orders and invoices in NetSuite. Driven by Stripe’s rapid expansion, which has reportedly seen the platform grow to process in the region of $400 Billion globally on more than 3 million websites, it is the first payment service provider to be supported by the app.

Like before, more details will be provided during our webinar, however the core advantages of ZonePayments for NetSuite users are:

• Automated invoice-to-cash process including split payments, vendor fees and refunds automation.
• PCI and NACHA compliance in payment processing.
• Improved customer experience via slick end-to-end processes.
• A native solution, meaning there is no requirement for additional coding, middleware, or interfaces.

If the above challenges resonate with you and your finance team is drowning in manual tasks, join our webinar on Thursday, 19 January at 10am to see the Zone Apps in action and ask any questions. Or head to our contact page if you have any questions or want to speak to a NetSuite expert.

About Zone&Co

With a range of ‘Built for NetSuite’ SuiteApps, Zone&Co makes life easier for the finance teams of 1,000+ NetSuite customers globally. Whether you’re looking for a solution to complex billing, off-the-self advanced reporting, or a straightforward interface to manage day-to-day tasks such as AP automation, payments, reconciliations or approvals, Zone&Co has got you covered.