As a business, you obviously want your customers to pay as quickly as possible; but the speed with which you pay your suppliers also has a big impact on the use of your working capital. Want to optimise your cash flow? Then you need to look at your income, expenses and general payments.

Waiting until your customers pay their invoices? You’d probably rather not have to. As a business, you benefit from receiving cash quickly. 

Fortunately, there are solutions to allow you to collect payment of outstanding invoices easily and quickly. An example is the European direct debit; this saves you having to wait for your customer to pay, and enables you to collect the invoice payment yourself on the due date. No more late payments! 

You can also collect payments faster and more easily online and in your business. Digital payment solutions such as the payment terminal and the payment button mean the money reaches your account quickly. What’s more, these solutions are just as convenient for your customers: they no longer have to carry cash around with them and can simply pay with a card. 

Do you sometimes have trouble with bad debtors? It can be a real problem. And getting money back from a customer is even more difficult if they are located abroad. If you want to avoid problems like this, outsourcing your debtor portfolio is definitely worthwhile. Learn more about factoring and forfaiting. 

Negotiating and obtaining good payment terms is not always easy. A good way to optimise your working capital is to obtain a few days’ payment deferral. 

KBC has several options to ensure that your supplier is paid on time but that you still enjoy payment deferral. A few examples of these payment techniques are import forfaiting and the payment bond. 

All these techniques give your supplier certainty of payment, enabling you to conclude contracts with no problems  without having to address your cash immediately.

Managing your financial transactions requires a lot of administration. Using a payment terminal and a pay button can save you lots of time, but automating your payment system will put you streets ahead. Tools that can process this administration in a way that is user-friendly, efficient and fast are therefore essential. 

KBC Reach and Isabel give you a single, central application for all your domestic and international payments. In addition, you can manage your accounts wherever and whenever it suits you using mobileapplications.

If you’d like a general overview of all your accounts, then cash pooling, a technique for simplifying cash management, is the ideal solution. By setting off debit and credit balances across several accounts, you will have one overall balance.

Naturally, we will ensure that you are always offered a solution that is tailor-made to your business. We use cash management techniques for this such as stepped pooling systems, and look for specific solutions for your reporting and interest calculation.

If you have any questions, or would just like to know more about optimising your working capital, contact your relationship manager.