They Say “Cash is King”
Yet cashflow is one of the hardest things to manage within a small business and is often the biggest killer to growth. It’s easy to end up with slow paying customers and needing to keep your suppliers happy.
With technology today, getting paid quicker is really easy with these three simple steps:
- Send invoices by email
- Accept online payments
- Send automagic reminders
You might be surprised to learn that most Cloud Accounting Software these days have this functionality as standard or as ‘add-on’ products.
We’ve had clients increase their workload and turn around time because of implementing these three simple functions. We’ve also saved our clients hundreds of hours chasing up old / outstanding debt because of these automated processes!
Send invoices by email
If you use Xero, MYOB online, or Quickbooks, sending professional looking invoices via email is a piece of cake!
All you need is an email address for your customer, their first name and voila! You save on paper and postage AND in many cases can track whether or not the client has received the invoice!
All because of a magic button on the sales data entry page called “Email”! You can even standardise the email to your own wording.
Xero’s magic button even has increased functionality whereby you can see whether a client has opened the link to the invoice – eliminating those furphies that the invoice never arrived or wasn’t ever received!
If you’re using another piece of Cloud Based software for your billing (eg a point of sale or project management software specific to your industry) these will all have email to client function as well.
Accept online payments
Again, most cloud based accounting software allow you to ‘plug in’ an online payment gateway merchant provider, such as Paypal, eWAY, Stripe, or Paydirect. All charge a fee, but some allow you to ‘oncharge’ that fee to your customer.
Each have their own benefits and quirks.
Once off payments:
PayPal processes directly into their PayPal account (not paying directly into your business transaction account) unless you request to transfer the money to your bank account.
eWAY processes directly into your business transaction account using a payment gateway online. A fee can be automagically calculated at the payment screen and on charged to your customer for using credit card facilities. The integration with Xero for example, even matches off the payment against the invoice when paid so you can easily reconcile when the money hits your bank account.
Stripe deduct their fee from their remittance to your bank account and the integration with Xero is pretty good. You cannot however, on charge the credit card fee to customers at the payment gateway.
Within Xero, you can setup online payments from within the package in a matter of minutes.
PayDirect is integrated into MYOB and charges a fee for using the facility. They allow you to apply a discount if a customer pays early, but at this stage, it does not allow you to on-charge a credit card fee.
Regular, ongoing payments:
If you have regular, ongoing payments from customers, Ezidebit can be used with any accounting package. Apply online, and download the web based link that allows your customers to sign up online using a secure page. For a small regular fee, you can ensure your debtors list is under control without you even having to do much about it!
Send automagic reminders
Xero has a really cool functionality inbuilt within the system to send automagic invoice reminders and statements to clients. You can even set up the functionality to remind customers that an invoice is becoming due and to request them to make sure the balance outstanding is in their books for processing upon due date!
Whilst not yet within the same package of other accounting software, you can use ‘add on’ software to the most common alternatives to Xero.
For example, MYOB allow this functionality within their ‘add on’ community such as “ezyCollect”.
Whilst within Quickbooks, you can use the add on “Invoice Sherpa”.
By using these services and functions, you are bound to reduce the amount of time spent chasing up debt and also, encourage your customers to pay you on time (so they don’t get the email reminders so regularly!). My dad did always say to me “the squeeky wheel got the oil”…
Getting paid quicker shouldn’t be a chore
With the the implementation of these simple three functions you are bound to not only save a lot of your time chasing clients, but also, get paid quicker and improve your cash flows in a matter of days not months!
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