INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: Paymerang Helps Local Governments Move into the Digital Age with AP Automation
Public Sector agencies are leveraging Paymerang’s world-class Accounts Payable (AP) Automation solution to modernize financial processes and overcome challenges unique to the industry.
In today’s world, local government agencies and municipalities are tasked with doing more with less. The challenge grows as agencies must find ways to best serve their communities with limited budgets and resources. Without realizing it, many government agencies suffer from the shortcomings of manual, paper-based accounting processes, such as hidden costs, a greater risk of fraud, and substantial inefficiencies.
Pushing Toward the Digital Age:
Like businesses in the private sector, local governments also experienced severe disruption during the pandemic. Most finance professionals could not go into the office to work, and paying vendors with paper checks became increasingly difficult. When searching for a better solution to manual processing, many agencies began using ACH functionality with their banks and accounting systems to continue working. However, these quickly became a major fraud risk because they didn’t have the necessary safeguards to protect businesses. Paymerang provided faster and safer solutions, prompting localities such as Union County, Wheaton Park District, the Town of Big Stone Gap, and Rock Island County to partner with the company. Since then, Paymerang has securely processed over $200 million in taxpayer dollars for public sector clients across the country.
The Benefits of Invoice and Payment Automation for local governments:
By automating the invoice-to-pay process with Paymerang, public sector AP teams successfully pay their vendors quicker and easier, creating stronger relationships with vendors. Without automation implemented, finance teams spend hours a week on manual tasks that divert attention from high-value areas. Invoice and payment automation saves finance teams thousands of hours annually, enabling users to streamline operations and remain in good standing with their local business community.
Additionally, Paymerang helps finance teams eliminate pounds of paper waste each year, reducing invoice processing costs by 60%-70% and payment processing costs by 80%-90%. Organizations can better serve citizens despite limited budgets by eliminating tedious manual tasks and decreasing operational costs.
Another significant benefit of using Paymerang is greater security and a reduced risk of fraud. Payments fraud is a growing crisis, with an estimated 95% of local governments being attacked1. Fraudsters highly target this industry as it deals with large sums of money funded by taxpayers. One fraudulent attack could shut down a city or town’s operations for hours, days, or weeks, leaving citizens vulnerable and unable to receive critical services. Organizations significantly lower their chances of fraud by eliminating paper checks and automating payments. Paymerang uses security measures to help stop hundreds of fraud attacks yearly using features like encrypted account data, Positive Pay, and multi-factor authentication.
Paymerang also values white-glove customer service, meaning that vendors receive superior service and support. More than 100 U.S.-based customer representatives can answer inquiries from vendors and AP teams, typically within two hours or less, guaranteeing that an organization’s AP staff isn’t left to deal with tasks that slow them down.
While other solutions can be challenging to implement, getting started with Paymerang is quick and easy and only takes 5-10 hours. Paymerang seamlessly works with various Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platforms, including Tyler, Munis, New World, CentralSquare, Caselle, Accufund and more.
Preparing for the Future:
Paymerang is pleased with its growth in the industry and looks forward to increasing its footprint with public entities and local governments in the future. With unexpected challenges like economic uncertainty, growing fraud risks, and constrained monetary limits, every dollar counts. Paymerang’s AP Automation solutions will help users adapt and overcome these challenges, safeguarding their success in the future.
To learn more about Paymerang, schedule a demo now.
Sources:
1Government Insider Technology
