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Payment Hub for Manufacturers: Faster AR, Integrated to Your ERP

Give your dealers, distributors, and direct buyers a self-service payment portal that writes back to Epicor Kinetic, SYSPRO, Infor SyteLine, Sage X3, SAP, or Oracle — without replacing your payment gateway.

Payment Hub for Manufacturing: Overview

Clarity Payment Hub is an integrated B2B payment portal built for manufacturers. It lets your dealers, distributors, and direct buyers view invoices, pay online, and self-serve payment history — while every transaction posts back automatically to your manufacturing ERP through Clarity Connect.

Manufacturers live in a world of high-dollar invoices, long payment terms, and customers who still pay by check or phone. Payment Hub modernizes that motion without forcing you to rip out Epicor, SYSPRO, Infor, Sage, or SAP. The platform sits between your ERP and your gateway, automating cash application, surfacing invoice status to customers, and letting AR teams stop spending their days chasing payments on a spreadsheet.

Manufacturing AR teams, plant controllers, CFOs, and customer service reps all use Payment Hub. Their buyers — procurement teams, distributors, and dealer networks — use the portal to pay faster and track their account, which means your DSO drops and your phones stop ringing.

The AR Problem in Manufacturing

If you run AR for a manufacturer, you already know the pattern. Orders are large. Terms are long. Collections drag. Every customer wants to pay a different way — ACH for the big accounts, credit cards for everyone else, wires for international, paper checks for the old-school holdouts. Your ERP does a fine job managing the order and the invoice, but the payment side is still half-manual.

The result: days sales outstanding that sits at 45, 60, or even 90+ days. Manufacturing industry benchmarks routinely show average DSO in that range, with small and mid-sized manufacturers often skewing higher. Every day of DSO is working capital locked up in receivables instead of raw materials, inventory, or expansion. And because B2B invoices are large, the interchange cost on card payments — often north of 3% on the wrong gateway — can quietly erase a meaningful slice of margin on every transaction.

Long DSO on B2B Terms

Net-30, net-60, and net-90 terms combined with manual collections mean cash sits in AR for weeks. Industry benchmarks put average manufacturing DSO in the 45–60 day range.

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Manual Cash Application

Keying payments into Epicor, SYSPRO, or Infor by hand is slow and error-prone. Misapplied payments spawn disputes and reconciliation headaches.

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Expensive Interchange on Large Tickets

Without Level II/III data and the right gateway, card processing on large B2B invoices hits the highest interchange tiers — quietly costing 1–1.5% more than necessary.

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Gateway Lock-in From ERP Add-ons

ERP-native payment add-ons tie you to a single processor with rates you cannot negotiate. Payment Hub is gateway-agnostic.

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No Self-Service for Buyers

Distributors and dealers have no way to see their invoices or pay online. Every payment requires a phone call, an email, or a check in the mail.

The cost of inaction. Manufacturers that leave AR manual watch working capital sit idle in receivables, pay unnecessarily high interchange on card transactions, and burn AR-team hours on collection calls that a self-service portal would handle automatically. Every day of DSO above benchmark is cash that could be funding inventory, capex, or payroll — not sitting on a customer's desk waiting for approval.

How Clarity Payment Hub Solves It

Clarity Payment Hub gives manufacturers a branded, self-service customer portal that plugs into your existing ERP and gateway through Clarity Connect — Clarity's integration platform with 15+ years of active development. Your customers log in, see their open invoices pulled live from Kinetic, SYSPRO, SyteLine, Sage X3, or SAP, and pay by card or ACH. Every payment posts back to the ERP as an applied cash receipt in real time.

You are not replacing anything. You keep your ERP. You keep (or upgrade) your gateway. Payment Hub is the self-service layer and the integration layer that makes B2B payments frictionless for your customers and hands-off for your AR team.

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Real-Time ERP Posting

Payments post back to Epicor, SYSPRO, Infor, Sage, SAP, or Oracle as applied cash against the invoice — no manual keying, no batch delay.

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Level II/III B2B Rate Optimization

Payment Hub passes the enhanced data fields required for Level II and Level III interchange, unlocking the lowest available B2B card rates on large tickets.

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Consolidated Invoice Payment

Buyers can select and pay multiple invoices in a single transaction — the way distribution and dealer networks actually pay.

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PCI-Compliant Tokenized Wallet

Saved payment methods are tokenized and stored by the processor, never on your servers. Repeat buyers pay in two clicks.

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Gateway Neutrality

Works with virtually any processor — no lock-in, so you can negotiate competitive rates and switch without rebuilding.

Clarity Payment Hub portal showing a manufacturing buyer selecting multiple open invoices to pay in a single consolidated transaction
Consolidated invoice payment — a common workflow for manufacturers with dealer and distributor networks paying dozens of invoices at once.
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No gateway lock-in. Unlike ERP-native payment modules that force you into a single processor, Payment Hub integrates with virtually any gateway. That means you can negotiate competitive Level II/III B2B rates — critical on large manufacturing invoices — and switch processors in the future without rebuilding your portal.

Common Manufacturing Scenarios

Here are a few representative situations we see across manufacturers and how Clarity Payment Hub addresses each:

Mid-market manufacturer on Epicor Kinetic with dealer network

Situation:A $150M industrial manufacturer runs Kinetic and ships to 200+ regional dealers. AR team spends 15+ hours a week applying payments manually and chasing collections.
Solution:Payment Hub deploys in 48 hours, connected to Kinetic via Clarity Connect. Dealers self-register, see their invoices live from Kinetic, and pay consolidated batches by ACH or card.
Outcome:DSO drops 7 days in the first quarter; AR team redirects a full FTE's worth of time to credit analysis and strategic collections.

Process manufacturer running SAP S/4HANA

Situation:A chemicals manufacturer on S/4HANA sells to industrial distributors with $50K+ invoices. Card interchange is eating 3.1% on every card payment because the gateway is not passing Level III data.
Solution:Payment Hub layers on top of S/4HANA with a new B2B-optimized gateway and full Level II/III enhanced data passing.
Outcome:Effective card processing cost drops from 3.1% to ~2.2%, saving six figures annually on card volume while keeping the ERP completely untouched.

Family-owned SYSPRO shop

Situation:A metals fabricator on SYSPRO takes most payments by paper check and phone. Leadership wants to modernize but has no appetite to rebuild anything.
Solution:Payment Hub stands up a branded portal in under a week. Customers get emailed invoice links; ACH and card payments post automatically into SYSPRO.
Outcome:Within 90 days, 60% of payment volume shifts to the portal and check-handling labor drops sharply — no ERP replacement, no rebuild.

Benefits for Manufacturing Companies

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Lower DSO

Customers pay the moment the invoice hits their inbox instead of waiting for the next check run. Manufacturers consistently see 5–13 day DSO reductions post-deployment.

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Better Effective Rate on Card Volume

Level II/III enhanced data passing unlocks the lowest B2B card interchange — often saving 0.5–1.0% on every card transaction.

Elimination of Manual Cash Application

Clarity Connect posts every portal payment back to the ERP automatically. Misapplied payments drop to near zero.

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Self-Service for Your Buyer Network

Dealers and distributors pay, review invoices, and check payment history around the clock without calling your AR team.

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Gateway Freedom

Because Payment Hub is gateway-agnostic, you negotiate your own rates and can switch processors without rebuilding your portal.

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Enterprise-Grade Security

PCI DSS-compliant tokenization keeps card data off your servers. TLS-encrypted transactions end-to-end.

5–13 days
typical DSO reduction after deploying a self-service AR portal
$2–$4
automated transaction cost vs. $12–$15 manual
48 hrs
typical time to go live with Payment Hub
0.5–1.0%
typical savings on card interchange with Level II/III data

Everyone in the manufacturing AR chain benefits. AR managers and cash-app clerks reclaim hours every week. Plant controllers and CFOs get real-time cash-position visibility. Customer service stops fielding payment-status calls. And your dealer, distributor, and direct-buyer network gets the digital self-service experience they already expect from every other vendor they pay.

ERPs We Integrate With for Manufacturing

Manufacturers run a wide range of ERPs, and Payment Hub integrates with all the major platforms through Clarity Connect. Here are the ERPs we most commonly deploy against in manufacturing, each with a matching battlecard you can reference for specifics.

Integration pattern: Most manufacturers run a single ERP of record (Kinetic, SYSPRO, SyteLine, S/4HANA, etc.) with a separate gateway relationship. Clarity Connect bridges both sides — pulling open invoices from the ERP in real time, pushing applied payments back, and handling the Level II/III data pass-through to the gateway. No middleware servers to maintain on your side.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Clarity Payment Hub work with our manufacturing ERP?

Yes. Payment Hub integrates with Epicor Kinetic, Infor SyteLine (CloudSuite Industrial), SYSPRO, Sage X3, SAP S/4HANA, SAP ECC, Oracle EBS, and others through the Clarity Connect integration platform. Each major ERP has a dedicated battlecard detailing the integration approach.

Can our dealers and distributors pay multiple invoices at once?

Yes. Consolidated invoice payment is a core workflow. Buyers log in, select any combination of open invoices, and pay them in a single transaction. The payment splits and applies correctly against each invoice in your ERP automatically.

How much can we save on card interchange?

It depends on your current gateway and volume, but manufacturers routinely save 0.5–1.0% on card transactions once Level II/III enhanced data is passed correctly. On a $50,000 invoice, that's $250–$500 per transaction.

Are we locked into a specific gateway or processor?

No. Payment Hub is gateway-agnostic. You can keep your existing processor, switch to a B2B-optimized one, or negotiate better rates — Payment Hub does not restrict your choice.

How long does deployment take for a manufacturer?

Most deployments go live within 48 hours of Clarity receiving credentials to your ERP sandbox. The platform is pre-built and packaged, not a custom build.

Is customer card data stored on our servers?

No. All card data is tokenized and vaulted at the payment processor. Payment Hub never stores raw card numbers, keeping your PCI DSS scope minimal.

Related Industries

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