Last month, we ran a webinar on TaskCollect, our AI-enabled accounts receivable automation app that’s native to NetSuite. We love how it makes NetSuite an even more versatile and user-friendly ERP, and we thought it deserved a deep dive.
Introduced by Adam Ladd (our Director of Account Management and Partner Management) the webinar looked into the hows and whys of TaskCollect. Our Chief Solutions Officer, Ian Irwin, took us through why we built TaskCollect, the additional functionality it offers and how AI will shape the app’s future.
If you missed our webinar, you can watch our TaskCollect recorded demos here.
And don’t forget to read our recap below to find out more about TaskCollect and how it further increases the value of the NetSuite ERP.
Here at NoBlue2, a repeated challenge kept arising for our customers with NetSuite’s Dunnings Letter module. While this module can automate chasing invoices, it’s not flexible enough for many finance teams who wish to keep a tighter grip on cash collection and tracking debtors.
These weren’t just NetSuite-based problems either. Research showed £11bn is written off every year as a result of missed invoice payments and chasing. And, while we’d spent years helping our customers to build their own solutions to avoid this financial threat, we realised there was a better way
Enter TaskCollect, built by NoBlue2.
TaskCollect functions as an AI-enabled Accounts Receivable Automation that is 100% native to NetSuite. This means it is fully built within NetSuite, and you don’t need to leave the software to access any of its functionality.
This functionality falls under three categories:
Beyond the features of TaskCollect lie its goals. While our intention was to build a native NetSuite solution that furthers its accounts receivable functionality, more specific goals drove our actual development.
They were:
Of course, the ultimate goal of TaskCollect is to help your business collect all cash it is owed and more quickly. It really is that simple.
One of the benefits of TaskCollect is being able to spot any risk of credit going unpaid. By doing this as early as possible, you can be more proactive in avoiding the situation.
TaskCollect does this in a number of ways. With customer onboarding, for example, it lets you control what actions can be taken for customers who have not yet gone through the formal onboarding process. And beyond just placing these controls, it gives complete visibility of why the block is in place, so all relevant parties stay aware.
TaskCollect also gives you insight into customers’ potential financial health. It integrates company credit reports into NetSuite, so you can get an easy overview of their financial health and decide if they are a risk.
This isn’t a static integration either. It maintains a connection to your customer’s credit rating, allowing live credit monitoring. If their financial situation changes, it is easy for you to spot – you can even set up notifications for potentially concerning changes that appear in NetSuite.
These notifications help you preempt financial issues in your customers’ future, so you can collect monies owed or reinforce terms proactively.
NetSuite’s existing Dunning Letters functionality is relatively limited. Essentially a scheduled email system, it lets you generate chaser emails; however, it is not flexible for the users to interact with when a need arises, such as invoices being placed in query, or when a remittance has been received.
For most businesses, this missing functionality hinders performance. It can lead to confusing communications being automated, leaving you and your customers disconnected at a time when communication is vital.
While TaskCollect, similarly has collection procedures as its base model, they work in a much more intelligent way. With TaskCollect collection procedures, the steps to chase customers for payment are more defined and relevant.
Another benefit of TaskCollect is that it provides a robust workflow to help you manage disputes and queries around invoices.
It allows you to categorise disputes, assign them a severity level and leave additional notes on the dispute record. It then lets you assign them to specific staff members. Dispute resolution is also streamlined with TaskCollect.
The goal of TaskCollect is to make these financial processes as simple as possible for users. For example, when categorising invoices, TaskCollect can flag when a related invoice has been raised for a dispute. It prompts users on actions that need to be taken, such as checking bank statements for particular payments. There is even space to mark on the record if it hasn’t been honoured and note next steps if the process is being passed on to another team member.
It increases the visibility of payment issues, both before, during and after they occur and opens up communication. All this helps them to be resolved more quickly and with better outcomes.
The last part of our webinar looked at how AI supports TaskCollect without relying on it. We appreciate that while AI is useful for many things, it still needs to improve in certain areas. This is why TaskCollect only leverages Oracle AI in the areas it is already proficient in, such as credit report monitoring and notifications.
AI excels in pattern recognition. It is able to use historical data and trends to predict when future issues could occur, without much human intervention. NetSuite collects masses of data, including credit report history, late or missed payments and other relevant information to spot when financial issues may be about to hit one of your customers. Much earlier and more reliably than humans are capable of.
We leverage this functionality in TaskCollect to calculate a cash flow risk rating for all your customers. More than this, you can see why that score was decided and what factors caused concern. This way, AI doesn’t reduce your visibility on issues; it increases it.
TaskCollect is in a constant state of development. We regularly speak to customers who already use this solution to find out what is working – and what isn’t working – for them, to refine and develop its functionality.
Our current development roadmap includes two new features based on AI: AI Remittance Advice Scan and Capture, and AI Bank Feed Monitor with Automated Cash Applications.
This functionality will allow remittance advice emails to be received into NetSuite and captured as data to allow the automatic creation of promise-to-pay records. This, in turn, will let you monitor eventual payments without human oversight and ensure that records are updated in a timely manner.
Soon, TaskCollect will also be able to monitor the transactions happening in your bank account to see when outstanding remittances are paid. It can then process these into cash transactions and close the invoices down, saving staff time from tedious cross-referencing and increasing the accuracy of results.
The goal of implementing NetSuite is always to streamline processes and improve efficiency, but when you rely on the standard Dunning Letters functionality, there are still gains to be made. So we built TaskCollect to make them.
We’ve helped implement NetSuite in over 56 countries and on over 1,000 projects, so we know just how many benefits a fully customised ERP solution brings to your business. Talk to us today to find out all the ways that NetSuite could support your business.
100% Native to NetSuite
Book your personalised demo with our team to see how TaskCollect can transform cash flow and reduce overdue payments in your business.
