What is your Payments Health Score?

1. Money In: how invoices turn into cash, and how predictably

This dimension looks at the distance between doing the work and having the money: how invoices go out, what payment options a customer actually gets, how much follow-up a payment takes, and how cleanly payments post back to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. More on Money In.

• Strong: Customers are offered an easy, obvious way to pay, not just a mailed check or a phone call. Payments post and reconcile without manual re-entry, and days sales outstanding stays close to your stated terms.
• Worth a look: Invoices go out on time but payment depends on reminders, phone calls and checks, and every receipt becomes a small reconciliation project.

2. Money Out: how vendor payments are approved, routed and controlled

This dimension looks at who can pay whom, by which method, with what approval, and whether those controls would hold up on a bad day, not just a normal one. It covers payment mix across check, automated clearing house (ACH) and card, vendor onboarding, and who is able to change vendor bank details. More on Money Out.

• Strong: Every payment has an owner, an approval path, and a deliberate method: check, ACH or card chosen on purpose, vendor by vendor.
• Worth a look: Approvals live in inboxes, vendor bank details can be changed on a single request, and nobody has reviewed the payment mix in years.

3. Architecture & Ownership: whether the pieces connect to the ERP and someone owns the whole

This dimension looks at the system itself: every tool, gateway, processor and platform that touches money, how each one connects to your ERP, and whether anyone is accountable for the whole. It is the dimension most diagnostics skip, and usually the one underneath the other four.

• Strong: Someone can draw the whole system on one page, and a named person owns it end to end.
• Worth a look: Each tool was bought to solve one problem, integrations are partial or manual, and when something drifts, it is nobody's job to notice.

The score is designed around the ERP you already run, including Epicor BisTrack, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, NetSuite, and QuickBooks Online at multi-entity scale. Nothing in this diagnostic assumes you should replace it.

4. Cost & Predictability: what payments cost and whether cash timing can be forecast

This dimension is not about chasing a lower rate. It looks at whether the cost of accepting and sending payments is the cost you intended: whether fee structures are stable and understood, whether fees are handled and disclosed correctly, and whether cost has quietly drifted as volumes, payment mix and entities have changed.

• Strong: You can explain what you pay, why you pay it, and when it last changed, and the answer still matches the original design.
• Worth a look: Fees are a line nobody opens, structures have drifted since they were set, and cost surprises arrive after the fact instead of before it.

SilverEdge discusses specific pricing only after the architecture conversation, never before it. A cost structure can only be judged once you can see the system it is paying for. Where card acceptance is part of the picture, see how SilverEdge approaches card acceptance.

5. Card & Expense: how company cards, receipts and coding are run

This dimension looks at how company cards, receipts and coding are run: how cards are issued, what limits and policies sit on them, how receipts are captured, and how transactions are coded to jobs, departments or entities. More on Card & Expense.

• Strong: Policies are defined before the card is swiped, spend is visible in real time, and coding happens as a by-product, not as a month-end cleanup.
• Worth a look: Cards are shared, receipts are chased, and expense data reaches the ERP late, incomplete, or re-keyed by hand.

How it works

1. Take the score. About seven minutes. Answer questions about how money moves through your business today: how customers pay you, how you pay vendors, which systems you run, and how spend is controlled. There are no documents to gather and no statements to upload.
2. See your score. You receive one score on a 0 to 100 scale, a result for each of the five dimensions, and the areas worth looking at first, in order.
3. Review what it means with SilverEdge. If you want to go further, we walk through the results together and talk about how your payments system should be designed. That conversation is about architecture. Pricing is discussed after it, never before it.

What your score means

Most mid-market companies land in the middle tiers, not because anyone failed, but because growth adds tools faster than anyone redesigns the system around them.

Your score falls in one of four tiers. Read the tier as a description of how the system was built, not as a judgment of the people running it.

Whatever the tier, the most useful number on the page is not the total. It is the lowest dimension. That is where designed work starts.

Who the Payments Health Score is for

The score was built for the person who owns money movement in a mid-market business, typically the chief financial officer, controller, or chief executive, at a company that has outgrown the payments setup it started with.

• Business-to-business companies in construction, building supply and distribution, manufacturing, multi-entity holding companies, and professional services with heavy invoicing.
• Companies running an ERP: Epicor BisTrack, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, NetSuite, or QuickBooks Online across multiple entities.
• Businesses where several payment methods, several vendors, and more than one person touch money in or money out. That is typically a company with roughly $5 million to $200 million in revenue.

If your payments still run through one tool and one person, you probably do not need a diagnostic yet. If you read the list above and recognized your own month-end, you do.

Companies SilverEdge has worked with

SilverEdge designs payments for mid-market companies that have outgrown an accumulated setup. Clients approved to be named here include Backbone Fiber and ECC, alongside Trice Jewelers, AAA Roofing and Chelo's.

Their names appear here because each company approved being named, including the use of its logo and its story. SilverEdge does not publish a client's name, logo or results without that approval.

Payments Health Score or Statement Analyzer? They are not the same thing

SilverEdge offers two different diagnostics, and they answer different questions. This page is about the first one.

If your only question today is about a processing statement, the Statement Analyzer is the right tool, and this score is not a substitute for it. If your question is bigger, why money moves the way it does and whether it should, start with the Payments Health Score.

What happens after your score

A score on its own changes nothing. What it does is tell both of us where to look first, so the next conversation is specific instead of general.

1. Diagnosis. We start with your lowest-scoring dimensions and learn how money actually moves through your business today, across every vendor and every person who touches it.

2. Design. We design the system around the ERP you already run: money in, money out, spend and card acceptance as one system, with one accountable owner.

3. Deployment. Rollout happens in phases, so daily operations keep running while each part goes live.

4. Accountability. We stay involved after go-live, reviewing performance, exceptions and drift, and re-scoring your Payments Health Score on a regular schedule so the system stays designed as the business changes.

Frequently asked questions