Are you being paid on time? When do you mail out invoices to clients? Invoicing can seem like a never-ending job, especially if you do not have a reliable system in place to maximise your accounting practices. If you are struggling with invoicing and billing within your business, you may need to make a change in the way you charge.

If the employees that you have completing the invoicing process are struggling with getting them out on time or appear to dislike the time of the month when invoicing occurs, you need to make a change in your company to speed up the process and make it more efficient.

Keep reading for the top six tips for optimising your invoicing system.

1. Improve Billing Times

When you are a small business, and are starting to take on many jobs, you need a plan on when to send out your invoices; possibly via an invoice app. Do you send them out the Friday after the job was completed? Alternatively, on the last day of the month? How do you follow up with the invoice process? These pertinent questions need to be addressed as you could be increasing your revenue stream by tweaking your operations with a new accounting system.

2. Have a Smart Looking Invoice

This may seem like a silly tip, but companies who place a logo, as well as their terms on the invoice, are much more likely to be paid on time. You are also more likely to receive funds on time if you put a due date on the invoice. This does not seem like rocket science, but 25% of invoices are sent without a due date listed.

If you want to be paid on time or paid at all, it is imperative that you put a due date on your invoice. If you are still using handwritten invoices or other time-consuming accounting processes, it may be time to upgrade.

3. Minimize Errors

Another essential tip when trying to optimise your invoicing system is to make sure the invoice that you are sending out is correct. When you send out a bill that is not correct, you are showing the customer that you do not have a keen eye for detail. This places mistrust in your relationship. Make every effort to send out the correct billing. Automated accounting systems will compile data including billable time, quotes, materials used, and other pertinent data into the record and generate an invoice from this data.

4. Make Your Business a Priority

We all know that the product or service that you sell is one of the most critical parts of a thriving business. However, did you also know that the billing process is just as important? Clients not only like you and purchase your products or services because of what you sell them, but also how you treat them.

If they are not happy with the methods you allow for payment or the payment terms of your company, you could be losing out. Why? Because next time they need a product or service, they are going to look for a business that has not only fabulous goods and services but also an easy way to order and pay with terms they agree with, especially if they cannot pay in full at the time.

5. Go to a Cloud-Based System

Businesses today are all about accessibility, flexibility, and saving time. The best way to optimise your invoicing method is to change your operations to an online cloud-based process. With online solutions, you can have invoices sent out and tracked. There will be no more of the client stating they never received the invoice. It will also improve and speed up the billing process, which is a huge time saver for all employees involved. There are no more manual data entry errors or data that cannot be shared.

6. Set Up Automation

The last tip to optimise your invoicing system is to go to automation. When you have a billing automation system in place, you can set up recurring billing schedules, send out overdue invoice notices to clients, take payments online, create invoices based on pertinent data such as billable time or agreed upon proposals, and charge recurring fees as needed. This is all done by your billing software that you had set up based on your business operation policies and requirements. This gives you much more time to actually be the boss.

How Billing Automation is Changing the Business World

Back in the day, you were required to do all business dealings by hand. There were no computers. You had a file on a client, and you put all the invoices in that file. Jump ahead to current times. We no longer have physical data on clients. They are all stored in our computers and spreadsheets. Automation is changing the business world again because now the software takes care of the client for you.

After you have set up your specifications of the invoicing software, the automated process takes over and sends out invoices, sends out reminders when those invoices are overdue, and updates the information when the accounts have collected payment. Automation is making it so much easier to do business today. It gives you much more time to focus on more critical avenues such as keeping your clients happy!