Plooto Review: The Next Level in Managing Receivables and Payables

published on 29 January 2024

Most businesses likely agree that effectively managing receivables and payables is critical, yet often cumbersome.

Plooto aims to take accounts receivable and accounts payable to the next level with an all-in-one platform for invoicing, payments, accounting integrations, and more.

In this review, we'll provide an overview of Plooto's key capabilities, top benefits, ideal users, and setup process. We'll also evaluate if Plooto is the right fit for your business based on invoice/payment volume, accounting platform, cash flow visibility needs, and interest in process automation.

Introduction to Plooto

Plooto is a financial software platform that aims to simplify accounts receivable and accounts payable workflows. This overview covers Plooto's key features, top benefits, ideal users, and onboarding process.

Overview of Plooto's Capabilities

Plooto consolidates key financial processes into one centralized platform:

  • Invoicing: Create, customize, and send invoices to streamline billing
  • Payments: Accept credit cards, ACH, wires, PayPal and more to get paid faster
  • Reminders: Automatic invoice reminders and follow-ups to reduce late payments
  • Accounting: Sync data with popular accounting software for accurate books
  • Reporting: Generate financial reports and cash flow forecasts to inform decisions

By centralizing these critical workflows, Plooto helps businesses save time, reduce errors, and improve visibility.

Top Benefits of Using Plooto

The top reasons businesses use Plooto include:

  • Process automation to cut time spent on accounting busywork by up to 80%
  • Cash flow visibility with predictive forecasts and tracking of incoming/outgoing payments
  • Centralized data and documents accessible by finance teams company-wide
  • Remote collaboration as Plooto works across locations and with outside firms

Together this leads to significant time and cost savings, better financial control, and scalability.

Ideal Users of Plooto

Plooto works best for small to medium B2B product and service companies that want to:

  • Streamline accounts payable and receivable workflows
  • Reduce double data entry and manual tasks
  • Improve collaboration between remote finance staff
  • Gain real-time cash flow visibility

It’s well-suited for growing companies that need to scale their financial operations.

Plooto's Setup and Onboarding Process

The typical setup process includes:

  • Linking business bank accounts and payment gateways
  • Configuring templates for invoices, estimates, and other documents
  • Setting up user roles and permissions
  • Migrating historical invoice and financial data
  • Testing core workflows like sending invoices and accepting payments

Plooto provides dedicated onboarding support and an online knowledge base to guide new customers. The platform is designed to be intuitive, but experts are available 24/7 to optimize the configuration.

Key Features and Tools of Plooto

Plooto offers a robust suite of features to streamline financial operations for small businesses. Here is an overview of some of the platform's core capabilities:

Invoicing and Billing Management

  • Create professional invoices with custom templates
  • Schedule recurring invoices to bill customers automatically
  • Send invoice reminders and follow-ups to collect payments faster
  • Accept online payments through integrated payment processing

Payment and Cash Flow Management

  • Accept one-time and recurring customer payments
  • Sync bank accounts to reconcile transactions automatically
  • Forecast cash flow based on upcoming invoices and payments
  • Get reminders of upcoming bills to pay vendors on time

Accounting Integrations and Financial Reporting

  • Connect to popular accounting platforms like QuickBooks
  • Automatically sync transaction data with accounting system
  • Generate real-time financial reports on cash flow, AR aging, AP aging, account balances, and more

Vendor and Contact Management

  • Maintain vendor and customer contact information
  • Collaborate with stakeholders directly within Plooto
  • Streamline payables and receivables with centralized contacts

With robust accounting, invoicing, payment processing, and reporting features, Plooto provides an all-in-one solution to simplify financial operations for small business owners and finance teams. The platform's accounting integrations, automation tools, and collaboration capabilities help streamline workflows while ensuring timely billing, collections, and payments.

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Evaluating Plooto for Your Business

When assessing if Plooto is right for your business, consider your invoicing and payment volume, accounting and cash flow needs, and appetite for automating financial workflows.

Volume of Invoices and Payments

Plooto shines when managing at least 10-15 invoices/payments per month. Larger volume with repetitive tasks yields the most automation value.

  • Plooto is ideal if you send at least 10-15 invoices per month and receive a similar number of payments
  • The platform leverages automation through workflows - the more transaction volume, the more impactful the automation
  • Time savings really add up for companies with high repetitive invoice and payment tasks each month
  • If invoice and payment volume is very low (e.g. less than 5 per month), Plooto may be overkill

Accounting Platform Integration

If using QuickBooks Online or Xero, Plooto integration can centralize AR, AP, and reporting. For other systems, expect manual syncing.

  • Plooto seamlessly integrates with QuickBooks Online and Xero to automatically sync:
    • Invoices and payments
    • Contacts
    • Reporting
  • This eliminates duplicate data entry and provides a centralized financial system
  • For other accounting platforms, Plooto offers some automation but syncing requires manual exporting/importing of data
  • Evaluate if Plooto's value outweighs manual syncing needs if not using QuickBooks or Xero

Cash Flow Visibility Needs

For businesses lacking cash flow visibility, Plooto's reporting and predictive modeling can provide crucial financial insights.

  • Many small businesses have limited visibility into cash flow
  • Plooto offers rich reporting on AR and AP with dashboards to view real-time status
  • The predictive modeling forecasts future cash flow to inform business decisions
  • If your current financial data and reporting meets your needs, Plooto may be overkill
  • But if you struggle with cash flow visibility, the platform can be a game-changer

Interest in Process Automation

Plooto saves the most time and effort for teams open to automating invoicing, payment reminders, reporting, and other financial tasks.

  • Plooto aims to automate as many financial processes possible through workflows
  • This includes invoice generation, payment reminders, applying payments, reporting, and more
  • Teams must embrace some level of automation to realize Plooto's full value
  • Resistant accounting teams clinging to manual methods won't see the full benefit
  • But for those open to automation, Plooto can significantly cut time on financial tasks

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

In summary, Plooto is an excellent platform for automating accounts payable, accounts receivable, and other critical financial workflows. For fast-growing small businesses, Plooto can provide superior visibility and predictability into cash flow health.

Centralized Platform

Plooto brings together siloed processes like invoicing, payments, vendor/customer management, and reporting into a unified hub. This consolidation of financial operations into one system reduces manual work and errors. Users have a single source of truth for AR, AP, and cash flow data.

Process Automation

Workflows like sending invoice reminders, accepting recurring payments, and tracking AR aging happen automatically based on configurable rules in Plooto. This removes repetitive administrative tasks from finance teams. With predefined triggers and actions, key processes become more efficient and consistent.

Cash Flow Visibility

Plooto provides detailed historical reporting and cash flow forecasting to improve financial predictability. The software analyzes past cash transactions and upcoming dues to generate forward-looking projections. This gives businesses better control and confidence in managing their working capital.

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