Product Update: November 2024

From faster checkout for net terms to customizable invoices and Canadian payment options, this month we’re rolling out updates to streamline operations and enhance customer experience—plus a guide to simplify year-end reporting with steps to calculate key metrics.

Let's dive in.

Pre-Authorized Debits (PADs) for Canadian Buyers.

Enhance the net terms experience for Canadian buyers with convenient payment options.

Building on last month’s improvements to streamline offering net terms to Canadian buyers, we’ve further enhanced the experience by enabling Canadian buyers to add PADs as a payment method on file. PADs provide a convenient way for buyers to pay and make it easier for merchants to collect payments, ensuring smoother transactions and better buyer relationships.

Faster Checkout for Net Terms Purchases.

Enhance buyer experience with faster credit confirmations.

Studies show that website delays as short as three seconds lead to a 20% abandonment rate, resulting in lost revenue and frustrating buyers. 

To address this, we’ve optimized the credit confirmation process when buyers choose to pay using their terms at checkout. These improvements have reduced confirmation time by 80% from an average of 12.5 seconds to an average of less than 2.5 seconds—delivering a faster checkout experience.

This improvement not only ensures buyers can complete their purchases without frustrating delays but also strengthens trust in the platform, encouraging repeat purchases and fostering long-term loyalty.

This feature is now live and requires no action to activate.

Invoice Customization: Display the Merchant’s Invoice Number.

Enhance clarity and trust with invoice customization.

Presenting the merchant’s own invoice number on invoices sent by Balance is crucial for maintaining consistency, clarity, and trust in financial transactions. For merchants, their invoice number often serves as a unique reference in their internal accounting systems, enabling seamless reconciliation and efficient tracking of payments. Once set, the invoice number will appear across all buyer touchpoints, including emails, the pay page, and the buyer portal.

Including this identifier ensures that buyers can easily associate the invoice with the merchant’s records, avoiding confusion and reducing the likelihood of disputes or delays.

This feature is a key step in Balance’s long-term effort to enhance our billing product, offering more robust invoice customization capabilities to meet the evolving needs of our merchants and their customers.

The capability is available in v2 only.  For more information, check out our documentation.

Introducing: Credit Application Email Management.

Streamline credit application communications to boost activation and adoption.

Unlike B2C, B2B transactions often involve multiple stakeholders, and the account owner may not be the one making purchases or applying for credit. To prevent delays and streamline the credit application process, it’s essential to ensure that credit application communications—such as approvals, verification requests, and updates—reach the right person. That’s why we’ve introduced a feature to manage the credit application email address.

Here’s how it works:

By default, credit application emails are sent to the account’s primary email address, as defined when the buyer is created by the merchant. To ensure the right person receives these communications, we’ve introduced two ways to update the application email address:

• Automatic Management via API: If an account member other than the account owner applies for credit, their email is automatically set as the application email address, ensuring communications reach the right person.

• Manual Configuration via Dashboard: Merchants can manually update the application email address for specific credit applications directly from the dashboard, ensuring full control over communications.

New Guide: How to Calculate Your Year-End Numbers.

Simplify your year-end reporting with step-by-step instructions.

Year-end is a critical time for assessing performance, managing finances, and planning ahead. To support you, our Customer Success team has created a step-by-step guide to calculating your year-end numbers using Balance. Learn how to access key data points, like total pay-ins, processing costs, vendor payouts, and financing costs, directly from your dashboard.

Access the guide here.