Introduction
A self-service payment portal on Clarity Payment Hub gives your clients and your AR team the same real-time view of bills, balances, payment history, profile credits, saved methods, and aging, sourced live from your ERP around the clock. With payment portal self-service, a client sees what they owe, settles it, saves a method, and enrolls in autopay without a phone call, while your team sees the identical live numbers. One customer payment portal serves both audiences through Clarity Connect, so neither side reconciles two versions of the truth.
One dashboard, two audiences, one live source of truth
Most client payment hubs are marketing-department PDF replacements, a web page that replays yesterday's statement. Clarity Payment Hub's view is different: it reads and writes directly from your ERP through Clarity Connect, so the buyer sees exactly what your finance team sees, refreshed to the moment. A brand-new bill posted 30 seconds ago is already visible to the customer. A payment captured on the call 10 seconds ago is already reflected in the total. A refund issued by AR this morning is already available to apply. One data stream, two views, and zero reconciliation debt between them.
The twist that actually matters is that your sales reps, AR clerks, branch managers, and controllers get the same dashboard in a team-facing skin. When a customer calls and asks what their amount due is, the rep is looking at the identical live ERP number the client sees on their own view. When the rep takes a payment over the call, it posts to the same ERP record the buyer would have hit from self-service, with one audit trail that records who initiated the transaction and on whose behalf.
customer view versus team view: same data, two interfaces
The hub has two front-ends running over one data model. The AP team-facing skin shows the client what they need for self-service. The team-facing skin shows sales reps, AR clerks, branch managers, and controllers everything the buyer sees plus the operational context they need to act, including collections notes, adjustment holds, payment-method expiration flags, and cross-sell opportunities. Both sides write back to the ERP in real time. Billing lives in the same view as payment: customers handle billing, see billing history, and resolve billing questions without a call, so billing and payment are one workflow and the billing team works exceptions, not lookups.
customer-facing view
Self-service, around the clock, and branded to look like part of your business. The customer payment dashboard shows the real-time outstanding amount owed and aging buckets, all open statements to settle one, several, partial, or all, a past-due flag on overdue charges with one-click-to-remit, available credit memos to apply to open bills or the total, saved tokenized payment methods (card and ACH), autopay enrollment, pause, and cancel on a self-serve basis, payment history with downloadable receipts and statements, new payment method entry where raw PAN is never stored, and billing contact and address management.
Team-facing hub
The same ERP data with operational context, so the team can act with or for the client. It shows everything the buyer sees, the exact same numbers, plus the ability to take payment on behalf of the customer (call MOTO, saved method), refund-hold status, payment-plan notes, and collection history, card-expiration warnings and recent decline flags, a multi-customer dashboard sortable by aging, amount due, or activity, an email or SMS clear-link to the client from any bill in one click, adjustment application and issuance with an audit trail, autopay status with enroll or unenroll on the buyer's behalf, and a full audit record of every view action (who, when, what).
Real-time outstanding amount owed: the moment of truth
The first question every account holder has when they log in is what they owe. The first question every sales rep has when a customer calls is what the client owes. Both questions answer to the same live ERP-sourced number, with no reconciling, no call-backs, and no stale PDF emailed last week.
Behind that single total number is a live Clarity Connect query to your ERP running every time the dashboard loads. The number reflects statements posted through this morning, payments captured in the last hour, memos issued yesterday, and adjustments made 10 minutes ago. If AR just voided a charge, the amount due drops. If a new shipment invoiced 30 seconds ago, the amount owed ticks up. The buyer never sees a stale number, and your rep never sees a stale number. Both operate with the same confidence that what they are looking at is correct right now.
How it powers self-service at both ends
Eight capabilities make the hub truly useful rather than a marketing veneer. Each one is ERP-integrated: the view is not a standalone web app with a nightly sync; it reads and writes through Clarity Connect to the ERP in real time.
Live ERP data fetch
The dashboard reads open bills, totals, aging, refunds, and saved methods from your ERP through Clarity Connect on every refresh, with no sync delay and no overnight batch, across NetSuite, Acumatica, Dynamics, Sage, SAP, Epicor, Infor, and more.
Settle-one, remit-many, or partial
The account holder selects a single bill to clear, a bundle of statements in one consolidated transaction, a partial amount against a single charge, or everything outstanding in one click. Each option posts cleanly back to the ERP as the right record.
Tokenized saved methods
Cards and ACH credentials tokenize at the gateway vault and are never stored on Payment Hub servers or in the AP team's browser. The client selects save for next time, and the token attaches to their account for one-click payment on future visits.
Autopay self-enrollment
Buyers enroll in autopay themselves: pick a saved method, pick a rule (every open bill, every bill over a set amount, monthly statement), and confirm terms. Account holders can pause or cancel anytime, and your team sees autopay status and can enroll or unenroll on request.
Apply account adjustments
The AP team sees available memos in the hub and applies them against open statements, either in full or in part. The refund selection posts back to the ERP as a credit application, adjusting the charge amount due in real time.
Aging view and past-due flags
The view breaks aging into Current, 31-60, 61-90, and 90-plus buckets with past-due open bills prominently flagged. The client sees what needs attention, and the rep sees the same aging for collections prioritization.
Statements and receipts, downloadable
The buyer downloads monthly statements, individual bill PDFs, payment receipts, and autopay confirmations on demand, all generated from current ERP data rather than from stale statement PDFs emailed weeks ago.
Full audit trail and branding
Every action, account holder or team, logs with who, when, and what. The dashboard is branded to match your business (logo, colors, URL subdomain), so it feels like your product, not Clarity's. White-label or co-branded deployment is supported.
A customer-initiated workflow: sign-in to paid in 90 seconds
Here is a client logging into the hub, seeing their amount owed, applying a memo, paying two statements consolidated, enrolling in autopay for the future, and logging out, all in 90 seconds. Every step writes back to the ERP in real time, and your AR team sees every step as it happens.
The buyer logs into the view. Acme Widgets' AP manager logs into yourcompany.com/settle, or your branded subdomain. The dashboard authenticates against the account holder log in your ERP. Clarity Connect fetches the live total, open charges, aging, refunds, and saved methods, and the dashboard renders in under 1.5 seconds.
The customer sees the real-time picture. Amount due: $18,420 outstanding. Three open bills: INV-4820 ($3,120, Net 30, due next week), INV-4881 ($5,400, past due by 14 days), and INV-4902 ($9,900, Net 30, due in three weeks). Available adjustment: $320 from last month's return. Saved method: Visa ending 4421.
The AP manager selects two bills to remit. They select INV-4820 and INV-4881 (total $8,520), click apply available memo so the $320 refund applies against INV-4881 and reduces the selection to $8,200, and select the saved Visa 4421.
Payment submits and the gateway authorizes. Clarity identifies Visa 4421's BIN as Visa Purchasing (commercial) and flags the transaction for Level 3 enrichment. Clarity Connect pulls statement line items from the ERP for both charges and packages them into the Level 3 envelope. The gateway authorizes $8,200 in under two seconds at Level 3 rates.
The ERP posts the cash application. Clarity Connect writes to the ERP: INV-4820 closes ($3,120 applied), INV-4881 closes ($5,080 cash plus $320 adjustment, $5,400 applied), the $320 memo is consumed, and the cash receipt lands in GL 1010 for $8,200. The client's amount owed updates to $9,900, with only INV-4902 remaining open. The AR team's dashboard picks up the payment in real time.
The buyer enrolls in autopay. The customer clicks enroll in autopay, picks the saved Visa 4421, selects the rule to pay every open bill automatically on its due date, and reviews and confirms terms. The enrollment posts to Payment Hub's scheduler, and INV-4902 is now set to auto-pay on its due date.
The hub confirms and emails a receipt. The view shows the payment as successful, $8,200 applied to two bills, autopay enrolled. A receipt email goes to the customer's billing contact automatically, the customer can download the receipt PDF, and the transaction is already visible in payment history. Total elapsed time so far is 90 seconds.
Your rep sees it in the team dashboard. Acme's assigned sales rep opens their team dashboard the next morning. Acme's past-due is cleared and no longer needs a collections call, autopay is enrolled on the remaining statement, and Level 3 savings of about $61 are logged on the transaction. There is no work for the rep, because the hub handled the entire interaction without anyone on your side being involved.
Past-due self-service: clearing aging without the call
A meaningful share of past-due aging is just reminder-driven: customers intended to pay but missed the due date, and once they see the past-due flag, they pay. Payment Hub's view makes that path frictionless. Past-due charges are prominently flagged, one-click pay clears them, and automated reminder emails carry direct pay-links straight to the open bill-ready-to-pay view.
When this is combined with automated past-due reminder emails triggered by the ERP's aging status, the typical result is that a majority of 30-to-60-day aging clears itself through customer self-service. Your AR team's collections effort shifts from routine friendly-reminder calls on small past-due totals to higher-value dispute resolution and true collections on the aged-over-90 bucket. DSO reductions of 5 to 12 days in the first 90 days are typical for B2B operations with a mix of responsive and unresponsive customers.
Industries where self-service payment pays off most
Self-service payment dashboards deliver the most value wherever a high volume of routine bill-inquiry and payment-processing work currently lands on human AR staff, and wherever customers are willing or eager to transact without a call. B2B businesses with repeat customers dominate the strong-fit list.
Wholesale and Industrial Distribution
Repeat B2B customers ordering weekly or monthly on Net-30 terms. The hub eliminates what-is-my-amount due calls to inside sales, and customers self-serve across statement payment, partial-pay, and refund application. This is often the highest-ROI deployment, across repeat B2B buyers with running balances, distributor-to-distributor relationships, and fleet, parts, and supply recurring orders.
Manufacturing and Industrial
B2B manufacturing with Net-30 and Net-45 customers, deposits on larger orders, and routine charge flows. The view handles open bill payment, deposit tracking, autopay enrollment, and past-due resolution without tying up controller time on routine lookups, across multi-bill account relationships, deposit-driven order workflows, and the customer AP team as a dashboard user.
Government and Municipal Billing
Utility bills, permit fees, tax assessments, parking citations, and court fines. This is high-volume, recurring, constituent-facing payment work, and the hub eliminates counter traffic and call calls for routine payment so staff can focus on exceptions and appeals, across municipal utility (water, gas, electric) billing, permit and license fee collection, and citation and fine payment.
Healthcare (Patient Billing)
Patient-responsibility billing after insurance processing, including copays, deductibles, and procedure balances. The hub gives patients the self-service they increasingly expect, with payment plans, split-pay, and family-account support, which reduces medical-billing collections pressure, across patient balance bills, payment plans and installments, and family or household account views.
Professional Services B2B
Law firms, CPA practices, engineering consultancies, IT services, and architectural firms. A client-facing hub handles project retainer statements, milestone charges, and final billings, so client AP teams self-serve and firm partners save time on billing inquiries, across retainer and milestone billing, matter-level open bill detail, and a saved method for repeat engagements.
Education (Tuition and Fees)
Higher-ed tuition, K-12 tuition and activity fees, and continuing-ed registration. Students and parents self-serve tuition payment, fee payment, and payment-plan enrollment, so bursar and registrar offices focus on exceptions rather than routine transactions, across a student or parent hub with balance, payment plans and installments, and family or sibling account consolidation.
Nonprofit and Association Dues
Membership dues, event registration fees, sponsorship bills, and donor pledge fulfillment. The portal serves members, donors, and sponsors with self-service for dues renewal, pledge tracking, and tax-receipt downloads, so the operations team can focus on development and programs, across annual dues renewal, event registration and sponsor statements, and pledge installment self-serve.
Retail and Pure eCommerce
Pure-retail and pure-DTC eCommerce typically does not have charges, because payment happens at checkout and there is no ongoing AR, so portal value is lower. Hybrid retail, the wholesale B2B side of a retail business, gets full portal benefit on the B2B side, with strong value on the B2B wholesale side, minimal portal use for pure D2C checkout, and some value for post-purchase returns and adjustments.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can customers actually do in the self-serve portal?
Customers log into a branded payment portal, see their ERP-sourced real-time account detail (open bills, total outstanding balance, available account memos, saved methods, payment history, statements), and act on any of it. They can pay a single bill, pay several statements consolidated into one transaction, make a partial payment, apply an account credit, download a statement or receipt, save a new payment method (tokenized), update billing contacts, or enroll in autopay. All of it is available around the clock without a phone call to your AR team.
Does the sales and AR team see the same thing the customer sees?
Yes. The same real-time ERP-sourced data drives both the customer-facing portal and the internal team view, so your AR clerk, sales rep, controller, or branch manager sees the customer's current open charges, balance, credits, payment history, and saved methods in a team-facing version of the same portal. When a customer calls asking what they owe, the rep on the phone is looking at the identical number the customer would see if they logged in, with no lookups, no spreadsheet, and no "let me check with accounting and call you back." The team view adds operational context (credit-hold notes, collections history, payment-method expiration flags, cross-sell opportunities) that the customer does not see, but the core balance and open bill data is identical across both audiences.
How real-time is real-time exactly?
Sub-second in the typical case. When a new bill posts in the ERP, the customer portal reflects it within seconds. When a payment captures through Payment Hub, the customer's balance updates immediately, and the customer sees the payment processed with the new balance on the screen they are still looking at. When AR adjusts an invoice or applies a credit in the ERP, the customer's portal picks up the change on next refresh. There is no nightly-batch portal sync that leaves customers looking at yesterday's data. The portal is not a copy of ERP data; it is a live read from the ERP through Clarity Connect every time it renders.
Can customers see past-due and aging information?
Yes. The customer portal includes an aging view (Current, 31-60, 61-90, 90-plus) showing which charges are in each bucket and the total owed in each. Past-due open bills are flagged on the main open-invoices list with a visual indicator so customers see at a glance what needs attention, and customers can click any past-due invoice to pay it directly. For businesses where automated past-due reminders are configured, customers receive an email with a direct pay link that takes them to the exact invoice in the portal, ready to pay in one click. This combination of portal visibility plus proactive reminder emails typically clears a meaningful share of 30-to-60-day aging without staff time.
Do customers need separate logins for each location or entity we operate?
No. A customer who does business with multiple locations, entities, or subsidiaries of your organization sees a consolidated view across all of them: total outstanding across all entities, invoices from each, and aging rolled up or broken down by entity. They have one login that represents their overall relationship with your business, regardless of how many ERP entities or branches they buy from. This matters for multi-location distributors and franchise operators where the customer has one procurement relationship but buys from five of your branches.
Does the portal accept all payment methods we do?
Yes. Credit card (Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, Discover), ACH and eCheck, saved tokenized methods, wallet methods (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, PayPal) where your gateway supports them, and customer account credits. The portal respects whatever method configuration you have set: if your policy allows ACH for invoice payments over $2,000 but requires card below that threshold, the portal enforces it. Commercial cards automatically trigger Level III enrichment for the interchange savings, and surcharging, where permitted by state law, is configured centrally and applied uniformly to portal transactions.
Can customers save payment methods to the portal for later use?
Yes. Payment methods (cards and ACH) are tokenized at the gateway vault and stored on the customer's account, not on Payment Hub's servers or on the customer's browser. The customer selects save this card at any payment moment and the tokenized reference attaches to their profile. On next login, they see the method listed (last four digits, expiration, nickname) and can pick it for one-click payment. They can add or remove methods, mark one as default for autopay, and delete methods they no longer use. Raw PAN never touches Payment Hub, which is also why the portal keeps your compliance footprint light, in lower PCI SAQ scope.
Does enrolling in autopay through the portal work?
Yes. Customers self-enroll in autopay from the portal: pick a saved payment method, pick the trigger rule (every invoice, every invoice over a set amount, monthly statement, and so on), review terms, and confirm. The enrollment stores in Clarity, and every triggering event runs the scheduled payment automatically. Customers can pause, update, or cancel autopay anytime from the same portal. Your AR team also sees which customers are on autopay and can enroll or unenroll on a customer's behalf if the customer prefers to handle it over the phone. Autopay runs the existing saved method, and if the method fails or expires, the customer gets an email and the autopay pauses until they update it.