It’s 8 p.m., and a contractor finally has a minute to pay the $12,000 he owes you. Your office closed three hours ago, and he can’t find the email with the invoice. Without an AR payment portal, he has no other way to pull it up and pay. He plans to call in the morning, spends the day on a job site instead, and the payment slips another week.

A customer payment portal lets customers find their invoices and pay any time, even after your office closes. Whether you’re choosing your first one or replacing one that isn’t working, the one you pick decides how much time and money your AR work keeps draining from your team.

Below are the questions we’d ask in your seat when choosing accounts receivable software for a construction supply business.

The short answer: choose a portal your customers can use from a phone, that syncs both ways with your ERP, accepts ACH and card with a way to pass card fees on, and comes with a support team that responds in minutes. Then read the contract as closely as you watched the demo.

Take these questions into your demos. Download the free AR payment portal vendor checklist, so you can compare vendors side by side.

1. Is it easy for your customers to use?

Test the customer side before anything else. The easier a portal is for your customers, the faster they switch from checks and phone calls to paying online.

Look for a portal where your customers can:

• View open invoices and statements without calling your office.

• Pay by ACH or card in a few taps from a phone.

• Pay any time, even after your office closes.

When paying is simple, customers change their habits. At Applied Equipment Solutions, one of the suppliers we work with, customers now pay online two to three times a week instead of mailing checks that took 7 to 10 days to arrive.

Ease of use also depends on who helps your customers get started. Ask whether the vendor will train your customers on the portal and answer their questions, or whether that falls to your AR team. At Dill, our team trains suppliers’ customers on how to pay online, so your AR team doesn’t have to.

Ask the vendor: “Show me what my customer’s experience looks like, from viewing invoices and statements to making a payment.”

2. Is it built for construction suppliers?

A portal built for construction supply fits the way your customers buy and pay, so they don’t have to work around it.

Your customers are often contractors on the move between job sites, so the portal should work as well on a phone as it does on a desktop. Many of them also buy by project and want to see what they owe on each job before they pay. Look for a portal where customers can:

• View invoices and statements by project or job.

• Pay for one project without sorting through every open invoice.

• Attach a tax-exemption certificate when they short-pay an invoice.

• Do all of it from a phone, with no app to download.

Dill is purpose-built for construction suppliers, so customers can view and pay by job from day one.

Ask the vendor: “Show me how a customer would view and pay everything on one project from their phone.”

3. How does it connect to your ERP?

A portal that syncs both ways with your ERP saves your team the most time. A payment link that only collects money leaves invoice lookups and payment posting with your staff.

With a two-way sync, the portal reads open invoices, statements, terms, and discounts from your ERP, and payments post back to the right invoices without anyone keying them in. Failed or drawn-out integrations are among the most common reasons suppliers leave a portal vendor, so get specifics:

• Which ERPs is the vendor live on today? Ask by name: Epicor Eclipse, Epicor Prophet 21, Infor CSD, Infor FACTS, Sage, NetSuite, or whatever you run.

• Who does the integration work, your IT team or theirs?

• How long does it take from signing to customers paying online?

• What works without API access? Many portals can still show invoices through a file transfer, while posting payments back usually needs the API.

For a sense of timing, Central Pipe, one of our customers, went live on Epicor Eclipse in under four weeks, and most suppliers we work with are live in 2 to 6 weeks.

Ask the vendor: “Which parts of the setup does your team handle, and what will our IT team need to do?”

4. How fast does the support team respond?

Ask every vendor for their average support response time. A payment portal handles your incoming cash, so a problem that stays open is money that isn’t reaching you.

We recently talked with a supplier whose AR vendor took two weeks to get back to them about a problem with their portal. For those two weeks, they watched the issues pile up:

• Customers who tried to pay online hit errors. Some called the office, and others went back to mailing checks.

• Payments that did go through stopped posting to the ERP, so the team keyed them in by hand.

• The phones and inbox filled with customers asking whether a payment went through or for invoice copies they could no longer pull up.

• Paid accounts still showed as past due, so reminders went to customers who had already paid, and some accounts risked a credit hold on new orders.

• Month-end close slowed down while the team reconciled what had come in and what hadn’t.

Every day the ticket stayed open added to that list, and to the cleanup afterward.

Questions worth asking:

• What is your average response time, and how do you measure it?

• Who answers: a named person who knows our account, or a shared ticket queue?

• Will you help our customers when they have trouble paying?

• Do you charge for account changes, like renaming an account or adding a location?

Then check with references. Ask how long their last support request took to resolve.

For comparison, our own support team at Dill averages under 10 minutes to respond, and we train suppliers’ customers on how to pay online too.

Ask the vendor: “What’s your average response time, in writing?”

Bring these questions to your next demo. Download the free vendor checklist, a printable PDF with all 14 questions and room to compare up to three vendors.

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5. Which payment methods does it accept, and who covers the fees?

Accept both ACH and card, and choose a portal that lets you pass card fees on where the law allows. ACH is becoming the standard for B2B payments and costs far less to process than cards.

Card fees add up quickly. For a construction supply house, they can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and millions for larger suppliers. Many suppliers want to surcharge but couldn’t enforce it before, because every exception meant manual work. Look for settings you control:

• Turn card surcharges on or off by customer.

• Charge the surcharge only above an amount you set, or only after an invoice becomes past due.

• Leave debit cards unsurcharged, as card network rules require.

• Apply early-payment discounts and finance charges automatically.

For more on setting up a surcharge program, read our guide to passing credit card fees to customers.

Ask the vendor: “Show me how I’d set a surcharge for one customer and not another.”

6. Will it help you get paid sooner?

Automatic reminders and invoices customers can always find shorten the time between sending an invoice and getting paid. Many late payments come from customers who can pay but missed an email or never saw the invoice.

Look for reminders that go out before and after the due date, with timing you can set per customer. Each reminder should link straight to the invoice so the customer can pay in the same moment.

Among the suppliers we work with, Tru-Duct now gets paid 5 to 20 days earlier by its contractors, and customers of Gorman Industries often pay within a day or two of a reminder.

Ask the vendor: “Can I change reminder timing for one customer without changing it for everyone?”

7. How does it use AI, and does your team stay in charge?

Ask where AI does work for your team and where people stay in the loop, especially with your customers. Construction suppliers keep customers through service. When an invoice looks wrong or a payment doesn’t go through, your customers expect to reach someone on your team who knows their account. AI that stands between your customers and your team can frustrate the customers you’ve worked hard to keep.

AI earns its place in AR when it takes on manual work behind the scenes, so your team has more time for customers. Cash application automation, which matches payments from checks, emails, and lockbox files to the right invoices, is a good example. Drafting collection reminders for your team to review is another.

Be cautious with tools that put AI between you and your customers in place of a person, like a chatbot answering billing questions or collection notices that go out without anyone reading them. Contractors notice when they can’t reach someone who knows their account. Questions to ask:

• Where does AI interact with my customers directly, and how does a person step in?

• What happens to a payment AI isn’t sure about? It should wait for review, not post on a guess.

• Can my team see, review, and override what AI does?

• Can I choose how much AI handles, or switch it off?

At Dill, we only add AI where it improves your service to your customers or saves your team time without hurting that service. Our AI matches payments to invoices, down to the job, with a 94% match rate, and drafts collection notices your team reviews before they go out. You decide how much AI handles.

Ask the vendor: “Where does AI talk to my customers, and how does my team step in?”

8. How secure is it?

Ask for proof of PCI compliance and an explanation of how card and bank data are stored. Your portal will hold your customers’ payment details, so security belongs on the shortlist from the start.

Look for encryption in transit and at rest, 3DS authentication on card payments, and clear limits on who at the vendor can see your data. A portal also lets customers pay by ACH without you printing your bank account details on invoices, statements, or emails.

Ask the vendor: “Can you send your PCI attestation and security overview before we sign?”

9. What else does the vendor offer?

Look past today’s problem and ask what else the vendor can take on. Payments may be the priority now, but credit applications, collections, and cash application often come next, and adding another vendor later means another integration and another contract to manage.

A vendor that covers credit and AR in one platform lets you start with the portal and add the rest when you’re ready, with your customer data already in one place. Credit you extend today becomes a receivable in about 30 days, so keeping both together saves your team from stitching tools together.

Dill offers four products: the payment portal, credit applications, Collections CRM, and AI cash application. Each can be bought on its own, and there are benefits to using them together.

Ask the vendor: “Which of our credit and AR challenges can you solve today, and which would need another vendor?”

10. What will it cost, and what’s in the contract?

Compare total cost over the full contract, including processing fees and future price increases, before you compare subscription prices. The monthly fee is often the smaller number.

Most portals charge a subscription plus fees on each ACH and card payment. Those fees depend on your volume, average payment size, and how many customers you can move to ACH. Then read the contract for terms that raise your cost over time:

• Term length. With a one-year term, the vendor has to earn your renewal every year, so they have every reason to keep service sharp. On a multi-year term, that pressure fades, and leaving gets expensive if service slips.

• Automatic increases. Some contracts raise the price every year regardless of usage.

• What’s included. Ask whether the price is all-inclusive or whether each piece is billed separately. Some vendors charge extra for setup, configuration, and training, or require a professional services add-on billed by the hour. Get every line item in writing.

• Change fees. Ask what it costs to add a location, rename an account, or connect a second bank account.

• Leaving. Ask how you’d get your data out and what that costs.

Dill offers one-year terms, and our team handles implementation.

Ask the vendor: “What will we pay in year three, including processing fees?”

Questions to ask every AR payment portal vendor

Bring this list to each demo and compare the answers side by side.

Download the free AR payment portal vendor checklist

Get a printable PDF of these 14 questions, with space to compare up to three vendors side by side. Enter your name and email, and we’ll send it right over.

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Frequently asked questions

What is a customer payment portal? A customer payment portal, also called an AR payment portal, is a website where a supplier’s customers view their invoices and statements and pay by ACH or card. The better portals sync with the supplier’s ERP, so payments post to the right invoices automatically.

How is a payment portal different from AR automation software? A payment portal is where your customers view invoices and pay. AR automation software covers more of the work behind it, like payment reminders, cash application, and posting payments to your ERP. Many suppliers start with a portal and add automation over time, and some platforms, Dill included, offer both.

How long does it take to set up an AR payment portal? Setup time depends on your ERP and the vendor. Most Dill customers are live in 2 to 6 weeks, with Dill’s team handling the integration.

Can a payment portal work without ERP API access? Yes, in many cases. Dill can show invoices and statements through a file transfer from your ERP. Posting payments back to the ERP automatically requires API access.

Can I pass credit card fees on to customers? In most states, yes, within card network rules and state law. Debit cards can’t be surcharged. Check your state’s rules before you start.

Talk it through with us

We’d be glad to walk you through how suppliers on your ERP set up their portals and what their customers adopted first. Book a demo.