One of the earliest posts dealt with the advantages of a fully integrated online bill pay system. Much has changed in the seven years since that issue was published and the topic is worth revisiting.

A good, fully integrated online bill pay system is like a Swiss Army knife – one tool that serves many purposes.

Do you offer online payments?

The most important question is are you offering online payments? If the answer is “no”, the obvious response is “why not?” Second only to bank drafts, online payments are the easiest way to accept payments. Especially if you charge a third-party convenience fee, because your customer pays the full price of processing the credit card transaction.

Even if your software vendor doesn’t offer online bill pay, there are many third-party options available. If a third party is your only option, I encourage you to consider it.

However, if your software vendor does offer a fully integrated online bill pay option, and you’re not taking advantage of it, here are some of the features you might be missing.

Real time integration

Third-party online bill pay vendors generally fall into one of two categories – companies whose primary line of business is payment processing and outsource print vendors. In the first case, an updated file with customer balances is usually provided to the third party once a day. Outsource bill print vendors who offer online bill pay generally rely upon the balance provided in the most recent bill print file.

The obvious weakness of either of these options is out-of-date information. In the first situation, payments made earlier in the day aren’t reflected in the balance. The classic case is a customer pays the bill in the morning and then, not knowing a payment has already been made, their spouse pays it again later in the day. The online bill pay vendor scenario is even worse – no adjustments or payments made all month are reflected in the balance.

A fully integrated online bill pay system solves this dilemma because payments are logged in real-time and the customer’s balance is always up-to-date, eliminating the chance of overpayments on an account.

Additionally, third-party systems require a file of payments to be imported the next day. This isn’t necessary with a fully integrated system because the payments are logged in the system as they happen.

History viewable online

Third-party providers generally provide little more than the customer’s balance and due date. A fully integrated online bill pay system should display billing history, payment history, and usage history.

The more information your customers can find online, the less they need to call your office for assistance, reducing the call burden on your customer service staff.

Customer portal

Over the years, fully integrated online bill pay systems have evolved into customer portals where customers can do much more than just pay bills and view history.

If you offer paperless billing, also called ebilling (and you should!), a fully integrated customer portal allows your customers to change their email addresses as desired, again reducing calls to your customer service staff.

Additional options provided by some customer portals include updating address and contact information, applying for service, initiating turn-off service orders, and sending messages to customer service.