After performing work for a client, prompt and efficient invoicing is essential to ensure you get paid for your services or products.
If you have a simple, manual billing system based on Excel invoice templates or even a carbon-copy, hand-written invoice book, there are a number of things you need to ensure are correct in order to expedite payment and appear a professional supplier:-
• Your invoice or bill template is tidy, i.e. neatly laid out, easy to read and professional-looking.
• The invoice contains separate line items for each service or product you are charging your customer for.
• The invoice clearly shows the total amount to be paid.
• The invoice gives explicit instructions on how to make payment, e.g. by cheque, bank transfer or merchant account such as PayPal.
• The timescale for payment is clear, e.g. payment is expected 30 days after receipt of the invoice. It's always a good idea to actually include the due date for payment.
With a manual billing system, you will have to track payments yourself and keep your own reminders of when payments are due and who you should chase for payment. You can quite readily construct your own reminder system, e.g. using the calendar in Microsoft Outlook or even a paper calendar. However, if you raise more than a handful of invoices per month, working in this fashion soon becomes unmanageable. If your billing needs begin to run into more than 10 per week, it will be a great benefit to you to investigate the use of a professional, purposely designed billing software. When looking for an invoice software, the most obvious place to begin looking is on the internet using Google. It's always good to get a recommendation and you may find that your friends or business contacts can make a recommendation based on their own experiences of using billing software packages.
The first decision to make when purchasing a billing software system is whether to buy a desktop invoice system or to buy an online, internet-based invoice software system. Which type of system to buy depends on a number of factors:-
• Do you want access to the system from multiple sites or while on the move?
• Do you want customers to be able to log in to the system and find the invoices you have raised on them and perhaps pull off reports, e.g. payment reports.
• Are you unconcerned if your finance data is held on a remote server outside your premises.
• As most online invoice systems are subscription-based, do you mind paying monthly or would you prefer a one-off, manageable cost?
If the answer to most of the above questions is yes, then an online billing package will most likely suit your needs. If most of the answers are no, then a desktop-based invoice package will be the best fit for your billing needs. There are many advantages to purchasing a desktop invoice package. While internet technology is advancing quite rapidly, desktop software packages still have the advantage in terms of power and flexibility. Also, while many online invoicing systems can be easy to use, the ease of use can sometimes come because the features provided are somewhat simpler and cruder than those that may be provided by a desktop invoicing software.
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