5 Ways to Supercharge Your Nexus Electronic Vendor Payments Solution

When you enable NexusPayments, an electronic vendor payments solution, you’ll be cooking with gas. It helps you slash payment processing time by 50% and costs by 40%, because you do everything online, all in one place. No more spreadsheets, stacks of checks, or manual steps to get approvals.

But you should keep a few things in mind if you want to maximize the benefits of NexusPayments even more. And don’t worry, they don’t require any culinary skills.

1) Pay all supplier types with Nexus Virtual Card – large and small

Nexus offers multiple electronic vendor payment methods to suit every supplier type, whether they’re a national chain or an SMB.

Large vendors like Sherwin Williams and Home Depot can easily accept Nexus Virtual Cards. These are simply highly secure, one-time use card numbers emailed for the exact amount of the invoice(s) due. Suppliers just process the card like they would any other credit card.

SMBs, meanwhile, can opt to receive NexusDirect payments. With this electronic vendor payment method, suppliers receive a virtual card, which is again sent digitally. In this case though, Nexus does the actual “swiping” of the card on behalf of the supplier. They don't need to invest in point-of-sale hardware.

Every vendor who takes Nexus Virtual Card or NexusDirect means you’ll have fewer checks to cut, sign, and send. This leads to considerable time savings for your team. Plus, suppliers can track these payment types online 24-7 through the NexusConnect self-service portal. They won’t need to call your team to inquire about payment status.

2) Pay all expense types with electronic vendor payments (even invoices that don’t go through NexusPayables)

Sometimes, companies have expenses that don’t go through their standard AP (Accounts Payable) invoice processes due to their sensitive nature or for other corporate-approved reasons. These invoices can still be paid with Nexus electronic vendor payments.

To do so, just include them in the transaction/payment file that you send to NexusConnect – and handle just you would any other expense.

3) Leverage Nexus reporting to identify more virtual card recipients

You can use several different reports to identify if/when there’s company spend that’s not being regularly processed through NexusPayments or virtual card:

• In NexusPayables, go to the Vendors Module. There, you can view a complete list of your NexusConnect suppliers and what payment type they've elected. You can reach out to those who haven’t opted for virtual and tell them the benefits of this payment method. You can also refer them to our Nexus Supplier support if they need assistance with switching their payment method.
• Ask your CSM for a Gap Analysis Report to identify any spend that could have been converted to Nexus Virtual Card but wasn’t.

4) Send any new suppliers to the Nexus website to enroll in Nexus electronic vendor payments

Real Estate companies change and add suppliers all the time. And while Nexus’s Supplier Services team runs campaigns regularly to bring more suppliers into the electronic payments population, there’s bound to be suppliers who are not part of that net.

Thus, whenever you bring on a new supplier, make sure you direct them to Supplier Self Service page on the Nexus website, where they can enroll in electronic payments. Suppliers just enter some basic information into a pop-up form, and a representative from Nexus Supplier Services will follow up to enroll them in NexusPayments. The supplier will be guided towards the payment option you prefer but that suits their needs at the same time.

To get started with electronic payments, suppliers simply provide a few details on Nexus's website

5) Use Nexus collateral and resources to answer questions and encourage adoption of electronic vendor payments

In many Real Estate companies, Property Managers regularly interface with suppliers – and establish mutual trust as a result. It’s key then that these frontline employees are not only knowledgeable about how suppliers benefit from accepting electronic payments but are also able to address questions about the switch.

Nexus has made it easy to keep them in the loop. There’s an email messaging component built right into NexusPayables that you can use to send emails to Property Managers who interface with suppliers. Just log in to NexusPayables, open the Message Center, compose a note about how you’re using Nexus electronic vendor payments and schedule it. NexusPayables will then automatically send the email to the specified Users or User Groups.

Nexus also has branded collateral, videos, and explainer pieces you can attach to the email that explain how virtual cards work and address any questions vendors might ask about NexusPayments. Just ask your CSM for this content (if you prefer to use your own branding on these documents, that’s fine too).