Whether you own a restaurant or a retail clothing store, if you don’t have good cash flow management, your business will come to a grinding halt. You must have cash coming in on a regular basis. A 2013 Yodle Small Business Sentiment Survey indicated that only fifty-one percent of small business owners use technology to help with accounting operations. Many businesses fail to use available technologies that would enable them to get paid faster.
It may seem obvious, but invoicing should be a business’ highest priority. Always send out invoices as soon as possible. It isn’t uncommon for a business owner to finish a job and neglect to send the invoice. Work piles up and you just forget. Typically, invoices sent within a week of work being finished or products’ being supplied gets paid in fewer than five days. Wait two weeks to send the invoice and the time taken to pay usually doubles. So, the cost of delaying to send out an invoice gets larger as time passes.
The Convenience of Online Invoicing
Small business owners often don’t have an accounting staff to handle the process of preparing invoices. You can get paid more quickly by using one of the many available online billing systems. You will be saving the time and costs associated with creating paper invoices, not to mention avoiding costly invoicing errors.
The Internet and cloud offer a variety of online billing systems that automate the billing process from the point of sale to collections. Online accounting software can connect to your bank account making it easy for you to track money coming in and money going out. You can create detailed, professional invoices so customers can reconcile and pay you on time. You can also track those lingering payments that are overdue.
Consider Online Payment Options
FreshBooks has found that electronic payments are made eight days faster than payments using more traditional methods. Intuit, Paypal, and Bill.com provide online payment services that can help you get paid on time. Some of these services can be integrated with your online billing system. They provide features such as basic e-billing services, automated billing, accounts reconciliations, and time management.
www.PayPal.com offers an online invoicing service that allows you to prepare and email invoices to customers as well as manage account reconciliation. This is a great option if you are unfamiliar with a fully-automated system. It ensures you get immediate payment instead of waiting for the mail to deliver a check.
www.Bill.com is a cloud-based solution that includes additional accounting services, such as vendor payment management and scheduling, and routing bills to employees or accountants for approval. It can be synchronized with most available accounting software and provides a paper trail to help with accurate record keeping.
Intuit offers a variety of overall accounting tools for your small business. QuickBooks can create online bills and track payments. As your business grows, you can upgrade to options that automate the billing process and help you manage your business finances.
Freshbooks offers many invoicing services, and also allows you to track time, bill in multiple currencies, and see when a client has viewed their invoice.Kevin Cooper is a financial planner by day and home brewmeister by night.
