Payment Assistant Pros and Cons

Serena Phillips

We recently started using Payment Assistant in the last 6 months.

It is included with our subscription that that was a big Pro for us to use this. The process is easy to create payments and once the vendor has set up their payment, that is the payment they use unless they change it. Repay.com is the company creating the payments, so they are the ones that reach out to the vendor to get their chosen payment method, and they are supposed to follow up -30, -60, and -90 days. We are automating a little at a time, and this is a great method for vendors to be paid. It is a little more difficult for individuals, but it will be great for them as well (it is mostly user error).

I do not know if there has been a follow up for those outstanding payments. These will apply to any virtual cards that are not accessed and any checks that are not cashed. ACH goes through right away and cannot be undone.

Any voided transactions have to go through Blackbaud for reversal. This takes longer than we like and we would like a more expedited option that would reverse these payments more rapidly.

Our representative has been delayed getting us answers and we don't know if she even still works at the company. It would be helpful to have a contact on our Payment Assistant page to tell us our representative's name if our original representative is no longer serving us. It would be nice to have someone reach out if our representative is no longer our contact.

Our biggest issue we have found is the way the Docusign is sent to the vendor. It is showing from an individual person and looks like it could be spam. It would be helpful if the name showed as a representative of our organization or had some type of logo so our individuals and vendors know to open it. The letter template that was given to us does not state that it will be coming from an individual. Our organization is not stated until the first line of the document.

It is a process but it gets better as we learn to use it and ask questions.

I hope this helps others that are using this program. Let me know if anyone wants to add anything.

Ed Leiter

Thank you for sharing all of this. These are good issues to be aware of as we debate whether to go the payment assistant route or not.