As the business grows, the number of invoices is steadily increasing. Most likely, this is good for business and the growth of financial flow. However, many novice business people are faced with the fact that the number of unsent invoices is also increasing.
All this leads to detrimental consequences for a company. The thing is that the invoicing process still takes a considerable amount of time. Therefore, newly minted small business owners often ask themselves how to improve invoicing process.
There are many ways to issue invoices and not spend too much time on this routine task.
Invoicing process best practices show that automated software can solve this problem in the blink of an eye. Perhaps it’s time to consider what is automated invoice processing and how the software can put the invoicing process on autopilot.
If you are still using the manual invoicing process, you will undoubtedly run into several problems:
- Payment control
- Timely sending of invoices
- The need to edit invoices depending on the scope of services and the specifics of the business
It’s impossible to keep all the details in your head. For this reason, many experienced people in business organizations the process of invoicing using specialized software.
What is the Invoicing Process?
While taking the first steps in developing and organizing your own business, you must have wondered: “What is the process of invoicing?”
Speaking in plain English, this process involves the formation of a financial document, where you define a list of services or goods for which a client must pay within a certain period.
Usually, the invoicing process steps look like this:
- A client buys goods from you or orders the performance of a specific range of services
- You determine the cost of goods or services
- Next, you agree with a customer on the total amount
- You fill out a template basic invoice and send it to a client in one of the formats, including Word, PDF, Excel, Google Docs, and so on
- Next, you can do the following:
- Track invoice payments and remind customers to pay manually
- Use automated billing software
The way how do you process the invoice matters a lot. Automated software can perform dozens of functions while you can focus on improving the quality of services or growing your business.
3 Tips: How to Automate Your Invoicing Process
Refuse to send paper versions of invoices. First, manually filling out invoices is a time-consuming procedure. Secondly, you must be aware of the human factor and possible errors or prints that may appear on a paper.
As a result, you may experience a delay in payment or the need to redo a document at the client’s request.
Discuss the preliminary cost of services before the start of work.
Otherwise, you may end up in a situation where a customer starts to dispute the total charge, which can lead to delays in payments. Send a preliminary invoice to a consumer and ensure that a customer agrees with the specified amount, list, and scope of work to be performed.
Offer multiple payment solutions. A wide range of payment methods will significantly increase the conversion of timely payments. It will be better if your company can accept payments from customers with the following:
- Bank transaction
- Credit or debit card
- Online payment services and so on