The average time to complete a transaction using an integrated payment processing system is just two minutes. With a non-integrated payment solution, the time taken stretches to almost three times as long. While six minutes may not seem like a long time, it can really add up over the course of a day full of visits.
Plus, if you’re on the front desk at a busy veterinary practice, or a client in a rush to another appointment, two minutes can seem like an eternity. That’s why it’s easy to understand why clients and staff alike can become very frustrated with inefficient payment systems.
An average veterinary practice processes around 500 credit card transactions each month. If your practice is using a non-integrated payment system, this works out at 50 hours each month spent on taking payments.
Remove the frustration of long waits in your clinic
The simple step of integrating payments into your practice management software would save an average practice 33 hours each month. That’s just over an hour of valuable time each day your team can win back – to use in more productive ways than handling slow and frustrating manual payments.
Think about the positive ripple effect this would have on your clients, too. Not only does each client have to wait for an average of six minutes while your team processes their payment – but there’s also the cumulative effect of waiting for others who were in the line before them. The busier your clinic, the longer they have to wait.
While these are common examples of the impact of non-integrated payments, there are other areas of your business that are potentially suffering, too.
Payment reconciliation
Manually reconciling payments and accounts is also a time-consuming task. Balancing numerous credit card batches from several machines is tedious and time-consuming.
If, for example, your credit card payments don’t match up – say your Mastercard® report is $100 up and your AmericanExpress® report is $100 down – you have to go through your records to find out where the error occurred, and then correct it both in your software and your credit card report.
But, with an integrated payment processing system, transactions are automatically recorded – almost completely removing the opportunity for these kinds of errors to occur. Not only do you get greater visibility and the capacity to create more-up-to-date and accurate reports, but you also save time by not having to correct the errors too.
Incidental errors
One of the key benefits of an integrated payment processing system is it leaves little room for errors, such as a client being charged incorrectly or an invoice being associated with the wrong patient. Working through these errors and fixing them is a time-intensive exercise, which is bound to frustrate your staff.
An automated system that removes the opportunity for these errors to occur in the first place means there is less time needed to fix them. And having an integrated payment processing system removes the opportunity for error and means your staff no longer have to juggle between several different systems while taking client payments.
Here’s another example of how the smarts in an integrated solution could benefit your practice: even if a staff member enters a transaction and selects the wrong payment type, an integrated payment system can recognize this and record the transaction against the right card type. These seemingly small wins can add up over time if they’re repeated, which is often the case in a busy practice.
Integrating your payment processing system with your practice management software will save your staff time, free them up for more valuable client and patient interactions, and lift morale. Your clients will also appreciate the more efficient payment processing, which in turn will help strengthen your relationship with them and improve customer loyalty.