SmartDebit comment on Forum of Private Business report concerning council’s bill payments

• 

SmartDebit

(PRWEB UK) 18 September 2012

Councils in the Greater Manchester area are failing to pay invoices on time recent figures have revealed. Last week’s report from the Forum of Private Business shows that the city regions local authorities take an average of 17.5 days to settle their supplier’s bills with just over half of the invoices paid within ten days- the recommended governmental guideline.

Manchester council were found to be one of the slowest nationally, ranked 138th and the fifth slowest in the North West. The council takes an average of 23 days to settle its bills with just 50% paid in within the suggested ten days and 81% within 30 days.

A representative of SmartDebit recommends that the council’s sign up to direct debiting to better structure their payment schedule:

“If councils were to choose to pay via direct debit, their suppliers would enjoy a whole range of benefits: improved cash flow, more accurate and easier to forecast projections, no laborious and time-consuming payment chasing. And of course the suppliers will know when the money will be in their business account.”

Reasons why public sector organisations could outsource their direct debiting to a bureau:

•     Reduces the cost of payment collection admin
•     Offers a simple user-defined reporting
•     Has the resiliency, security, disaster recovery plans, scalability and professional indemnity insurance that corporations require
•     Can be branded to the Local Authority to maintain consistency and confidence in the public sector
•     Provides an audit trail
•     Offers online training for various members of staff

SmartDebit™ are the UK’s leading Direct Debit service providers, specialising in payment processing services since 1998. A Bacs approved Bureau, scoring ‘Excellent’ in all five categories of the Bacs audit, and ISO 27001 compliant. Providing a complete range of services: Outsourcing; SmartDebit-Admin cloud based portal; SmartDebit-Online payer sign up; SmartDebit-API integrated solution and SmartDebit-Contingency.

PDF Print