Today’s customers often use their mobile devices to seek out businesses, place orders, and pay for their services – so shouldn’t business owners use their mobile devices to manage and pay the workers who deliver those services as well?
That appears to be the thinking behind the PayPal Business App, released this week by the online payment giant for both iOS and Android, which allows small and medium-sized business (SMB) owners to manage their company activity, including sales, payments, and customer history; set reminders; and even send customized invoices on their mobile devices.
“It goes without saying that when your team is small you need to be nimble, and this often means conducting key business operations on the go,” PayPal Canada SMB head Lizzie Prowse wrote in a March 28 blog post, noting that PayPal customers both in Canada and abroad had frequently requested a mobile app.
In fact, “solopreneurs, casual sellers and businesses with less than ten employees” represent more than 80 per cent of Canadian small businesses, she wrote, citing Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada SME research from 2015, with PayPal providing financial services to some 250,000 of them.
In Prowse’s March 28 post, Red Academy North America managing director Sean Eikerman praised the app for helping his company, a PayPal customer with locations in Toronto and Vancouver, streamline the payment process by allowing staff to invoice and accept payments from any customer, even international students, while at events or classes from their mobile devices.
“Getting paid is a crucial component of doing business, but it’s easy to put off sending invoices,” Eikerman said.
Prowse highlighted two features in particular:
Enhanced Invoicing
Simply put, PayPal has recognized that consumers increasingly use their mobile devices to not only shop, but send money and conduct banking, and optimized its platform’s invoice notification email and payment flow systems as a result.
Instead of requiring consumers to repeatedly log in, the company’s new streamlined payment process, One Touch, simply invites users to opt into a system that remembers their shipping and payment details, making it easier for them to see invoice details and pay directly from their mobile phones.
New Reporting Capabilities
“Arguably, the least exciting part of running and managing a small business is reporting, but it’s one of the top requests we get from small businesses who want to more efficiently run and manage their operations,” Prowse wrote.
Answering their prayers, PayPal is now giving business account holders access to detailed, customizable reports to help them manage common bookkeeping activities, including sales and bank transactions.
While the One Touch feature will be “more broadly released in in the coming weeks,” according to Prowse, the PayPal Business app itself is available now.
