The New Stack: When Finance Lives Inside Your Inventory System

As a product business, you know firsthand the frustration of dealing with finances, whether we’re talking customer payments, funding needs, or both.

When your financial friction points live outside your inventory management system (IMS), the frustration compounds. Reconciliation errors, declined-but-legitimate payments, and manual invoice exports for financing applications are hard enough to deal with on their own, let alone when your tools can't talk to each other.

But with the right IMS, one that has embedded payment solutions and embedded finance solutions, you can do it all.

The Problem Is the Gap, Not the Tools

Most small and midsized businesses (SMBs) running on an IMS already have access to payment tools and financing. The problem isn't a lack of options; it's that those options live somewhere else.

This disconnect means your inventory data and your financial decisions exist in separate worlds.

You end your day with your IMS telling you exactly what's in stock, what's been ordered, and what's owed. Then you open three more tabs to understand your cash position, chase a payment, or figure out whether you can fund a supplier order.

In other words, your inventory intelligence doesn't travel.

The data that should inform financial decisions is already in the system, but it's not connected to the financial layer. That's the problem embedded payment and finance solutions, such as  Cin7 Pay and  Cin7 Capital, solve.

Payments: What “Embedded” Actually Does That an Integration Doesn’t

Cin7 Pay is an embedded payment solution that lives directly within Cin7’s software. It’s powered by Stripe, and designed to handle the full range of how product businesses get paid:

• Credit cards
• ACH/direct debit
• Digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay
• By Now, Pay Later (BNPL)

That distinction, embedded versus integrated, matters more than it might seem.

Integrated payment solutions are not the bad guys. A connected Stripe or PayPal account enables customers to pay invoices, with the transaction information eventually reaching your accounting software.

But there are a few friction points that most businesses have quietly accepted as normal:

• Reconciliation is still manual. Someone, usually you or your accountant, is matching payment records to invoices. The integration doesn't know which invoice a payment belongs to. Cin7 Pay does because the payment happens inside the same system as the invoice. It marks the invoice paid automatically, and automatically handles all the accounting, from posting the payment to reconciling the revenue.
• Declined transactions go unrecovered. Around 58% of declined card transactions are actually legitimate; they just have the wrong expiry date, fraud was flagged on an unfamiliar geography, or there was a momentary network issue. A standard integration declines and moves on. Cin7 Pay's Stripe-powered Adaptive Acceptance technology retries intelligently in real time, recovering revenue that would otherwise disappear quietly.
• The payment method gap. ACH/direct debit is the most-requested payment method among B2B sellers because it's cheaper and preferred by wholesale buyers. However, it isn't available via standard Stripe integration. It is available via Cin7 Pay.

For businesses like The Glo Companies (Glo), Cin7 Pay is a soothing balm to their payment problems.

“Cin7 Pay has become an integral tool in helping us boost profitability while keeping everything transparent and connected,” says Eric Hill, COO. Glo is now able to collect payments faster at a lower cost, thanks to Cin7 Pay’s free automatic daily payouts and no additional platform fee.

Cin7 Pay, which is available in 135+ currencies across 90% of Cin7’s global customer base, also:

• Enables companies to keep cards on file for faster repeat B2B transactions
• Offers automated reconciliation syncs to QBO and Xero
• Reduces chargebacks by up to 26% with the included Stripe Radar fraud protection

Cin7 Pay is top tier, but we didn’t stop there.

Lending: Why Context Changes Everything

We heard you say that securing capital to fund a supplier order, bridge a cash flow gap, or invest in equipment is a painful process.

When you applied the underwriting took days or weeks. The offer, if it came, was based on general financial history rather than the specific operational signals like sell-through rate, invoice aging, and seasonal patterns that would actually predict your ability to repay.

So, we decided to fix the funding headache by offering the first and only IMS embedded financial solution, Cin7 Capital.

Cin7 Capital works differently. When a Cin7 user applies for financing, the platform already knows your invoice values, your payment history, and your order volume.

That context makes the application faster and the underwriting more informed.

To fully understand all that Cin7 Capital offers, here’s a look at the four products that are available within our embedded finance solution and what it looks like to use them:

1. Invoice Financing. Borrow against your unpaid invoices and repay when your customers do. Paula's Pet Supplies has $40K in outstanding invoices on 30-day terms but needs to fund a supplier purchase now. She unlocks up to 90% of that value today and repays when her customers pay her — without ever leaving Cin7.
2. AP Financing. Use third-party funds to pay your suppliers now and repay later. Jasmine's home fragrance brand needs to place a $25K supplier order in July to be ready for the holiday season, but paying upfront would drain her working capital during her slowest month. AP Financing covers the supplier invoice today so she can repay in up to 90 days once she's sold the inventory.
3. Term Loans. Get upfront capital to act on big opportunities. Greg manufactures pet food and wants to buy a $100K piece of equipment that would improve his margins, but he doesn't have outstanding invoices to leverage. A 12-month term loan gives him the capital he needs with predictable monthly repayments.
4. Line of Credit. Access a set amount of funds whenever you need them, pay interest only on what you use, and replenish as you repay. Back to Greg: this time he just needs a flexible buffer for seasonal cash flow swing without committing to more financing than he actually needs.

You can be funded in as little as two days with an application pre-filled from existing Cin7 data. No prepayment penalties. No cost to access or apply.

It’s that fast and that simple, and it’s what you get with Cin7 Capital as a US-based Core or Omni customer (we’re working to expand this amazing capability across borders as we speak!). The lending process happens behind the scenes, giving you an end-to-end, pain-free lending experience.

The Combined Effect: When Pay and Capital Work Together

Inventory decisions and financial decisions are the same decisions. Deciding whether to commit to a supplier order, to offer a wholesale buyer extended terms, or to push into a new sales channel are all simultaneously operational and financial.

A platform where payments, lending, and inventory are all native means those decisions can be made with full information, in real time, without switching systems. It’s a win-win-win for product businesses like Calypso Cards and  Nelson Line.

According to owner and CEO Dalton Laluces, the two connected companies are taking full advantage of Cin7 Pay and Cin7 Capital.

“Cin7 Pay has been a big, big win for us because we get paid faster. We also embed the pay links into the invoices we send out so they can pay right on the invoice as well, improving the customer experience,” he  explains. “And we’re able to save our customers’ payment information directly in Cin7 Pay, which has been awesome.”

Cin7 Capital has also been a game changer, helping Dalton bridge the gap between when they receive customer payments and when they need to pay vendors. “Other business owners should try Cin7 Capital. The fees are reasonable, it’s very convenient, and it’s something you can easily access.”

What to Look for If You're Evaluating Inventory Management Solutions

If you’re in the market for a comprehensive IMS, the financial layer deserves as much scrutiny as the inventory features. Here are four questions worth asking:

• Where does payment data live? If it's synced from a third-party system rather than native to the IMS, reconciliation will always be a manual step.)
• Can you apply for financing using data already in your inventory system? Re-entering information that your IMS already holds slows down the process and reduces the quality of your underwriting.
• Is the embedded payment experience actually embedded, or is it a redirect? There's a difference between a seamless checkout and one that hands your customer off to another company's interface mid-transaction.
• What happens when the platform's lending or payment partner changes? If the answer is "it affects you," that's platform risk worth factoring in.

Cin7 gives the right answers. Most alternatives don't.

The Gap Is Closeable

The gap between where your inventory data lives and where your financial decisions get made isn't inevitable. It's a product choice. The businesses using  Cin7 Pay and  Cin7 Capital are running with information their competitors don't have, from a platform they're already in.

Learn more by requesting a  Cin7 demo today.