Companies that seek to prioritize efficiency and productivity in their contract lifecycle management often opt to optimize contracts within their legal and procurement departments first. However, contract management software designed for finance isn’t limited for use by finance teams. These software solutions contain robust capabilities that support banking companies, credit unions, and other financial institutions. There are several advantages to adopting finance contract software, and we will discuss them all in detail below.
The financial services industry is essential to propelling businesses forward within any sector. Financial transactions are typically structured by contracts that are overseen by external federal and/or state regulations. Due to the complex nature of modern-day contract management, adopting a finance contract management solution is now the bare minimum requirement to maintaining competitiveness. With an intuitive contract solution built for finance, you can mitigate risk, increase compliance, maximize your ROI, and gain detailed insights into milestones and contracted obligations.
In addition, your software increases the protection of confidential client data and agreement terms with cloud-based security, user permissions, audit trails, data encryption during transit and at rest, and several other security features. Finance contract software boosts contract visibility by centralizing contract storage in a digital, cloud-secure repository.
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- Rapidly Automate Approvals
- Simplified Contract Tracking
- Easily Confirm Payments
- Oversee Vendor Payments
- Identify Clients Failing to Submit Payment
- Gain The Competitive Advantage with Finance Contract Software
Now let’s go ahead and take a look at the top 5 reasons to adopt finance contract software.
#1: Rapidly Automate Approvals
Faster approvals mean shorter contract lifecycles. The more contracts you can execute in the same amount of time will ultimately result in an increase on your ROI. With finance contract software, authorized users can configure flexible and customizable automated approval workflows. When a contract is submitted for approval, the contract is then automatically routed to the necessary party (or parties) for approval.
Finance contract software has the ability to automatically approve your standardized contracts without making any edits to their terms. For added efficiency, you can easily enable rules that notify you when contract terms are edited. For example, when there are discounts, payment deadlines, and additional terms that are not standard to the given contract, you can design alerts so that you are made aware of any change.
Perhaps the most beneficial quality of finance contract software is the ability to create a flexible approach to your contracts, where you can empower your team to set parameters to receive notifications and alerts when certain rules are triggered. In this manner, when an approval request is submitted, the approval is automatically routed to the correct person.
Learn more about how contract management software solves common problems during the approval phase is this blog.
#2: Simplified Contract Tracking
With finance contract software, tracking high-reward deals is remarkably easy. These deals are what keep your business on an upward trajectory, so it’s necessary that all of your employees are able to access contract tracking and monitoring tools at any time. Finance contract software empowers financial teams and banking institutions to gauge which deals might result in the best revenue stream.
Software users can categorize their contracts by revenue and delegate select individuals to approve the most profitable contracts. You can even configure reminders for key dates relevant to each deal like contract expiry deadlines and automatic contract renewal dates. In this way, you can prioritize your most profitable clients accordingly.
For an introductory guide to contract tracking, click here.
To learn best practices for contract monitoring, check out this blog.
#3: Easily Confirm Payments
Finance must be able to confirm accounts receivable, and this can be automated with your finance contract software to increase the efficiency of receiving and documenting payment timelines. This supports your organization in monitoring if and when clients pay for products and services according to the terms off their given contract.
To monitor accounts receivable, it traditionally involves manual entry of payments into a spreadsheet, and then receiving confirmation that each customer has paid according to contract terms. With finance contract software, you can build and customize notifications and reminders for payments deadlines, grace period dates, and alerts for discrepancies in payments. By supporting your finance team with contract management software that can ensure payments are submitted appropriately, you will likely improve business relationships by proactively mitigating payment errors.
#4: Oversee Vendor Payments
It’s never a good idea to spend more than is necessary on your vendors. Finance departments must ensure that their organization adheres to financial obligations developed with their vendors. Similar to accounts receivable, automating your accounts payable can minimize discrepancies and human errors that could hinder your vendor relationships. One major advantage of finance contract software is how it can support you in cutting company costs pertaining to your vendor partnerships.
In terms of accounts payable, finance contract software can support this process by allowing users to:
- design notifications to mitigate missed and late payments
- build approved pricing scales and spending restrictions
- create documents for authorized users to review approved vendors
By ensuring compliance with your organization’s purchasing restrictions, you effectively manage avoidable risk and the resulting repercussions. This also supports your organization in cutting costs by avoiding the late fees that accompany late payments.
For a guide to improving your vendor relationships in contract management, click here.
#5: Identify Clients Failing to Submit Payment
Finance contract software equips finance teams with the knowledge of which clients have failed to submit payment, as well as which clients submitted payment late. With your software platform, you can integrate your contract data with your accounts receivable to document which clients have paid according to dates outlined within their contract. In addition, you can automate several processes including the following:
- Route select customers to collections once they accumulate several outstanding and/or late payments
- Halt automated renewals when customers fail to submit payment
- Relay info to other departments regarding canceled contracts and non-renewing contracts
By leveraging these customizable notifications and alerts, you can save your company time and money by automatically canceling service to customers who do not follow contract payment guidelines.
Gain The Competitive Advantage with Finance Contract Software
Contract management software supports financial departments, professionals, and institutions in automating tasks and streamlining the contract lifecycle.
Dock 365 Finance Contract Software empowers financial organizations and departments with robust software capabilities that streamline contract activities while managing risks and increasing compliance.
Here are some of our leading CMS features:
- Intelligent contract authoring with preapproved contract template and clause libraries to reduce turnaround times
- Customizable contract intake and request forms to streamline the start of every contract for your legal department
- Permission-based access controls to ensure that your contracts are only found in the right hands
- Version control to support reviews, negotiations, and audit trail accuracy
- Cloud-secure contract repository to store, sort, retrieve, and archive current and past contracts
For more information, we would like to welcome you to schedule a free demo with us today.
