For a lot of Australian small businesses, one of the most daunting and complex things is creating and sending invoices. And, even when they’re sent out, there is really no guarantee that they will get paid on time. If your small business is experiencing the same problem, it might be the right time to change your invoicing process.
If you’re willing to do this, but don’t know exactly how you’re lucky since this is exactly what we’ll talk about in our article today. Here is a list of some useful tips and tricks, as well as 6 steps that you should take in order to improve your billing and invoicing process:
Step 01: Firstly, Determine What Your Terms Are
One of the first things that you should do is to determine what your terms are. What does this mean? Well, it means that you should sit down with your client and talk about the terms of the invoices before you begin working with them. Keep in mind, you should both agree on them if you want to avoid surprises or bad relationships with your clients. By doing this, you could also increase the odds of being paid on time.
The terms should state whether you’ll boll per project or hour, your fee (and any additional expenses that might occur from time to time), when the job was finished, the payment type or types you accept, the timeframe when your client should pay the bill, and one of the most important things is to also add a section where you’ll state the penalties that will be charged if your customer doesn’t pay the invoice on time.
Step 02: Optimization is Crucial
If there is one thing that you must take away from this list, it’s the fact that you must optimize your invoicing process. This is why you must ensure that you choose a suitable program for your Aussie small business. Of course, it’s good if you send the invoices as soon as you can, however, it could be inefficient at times. Hence, think about when you’ll send out the bills to your clients.
For instance, if you’re invoicing on a weekly basis, you should send them out on the weekends, and if you do it on a monthly basis, you should send them on the first day of each month. This is something that can help you improve your revenue quite a lot, mostly because doing this will help you increase your chances of getting paid. So, ensure that you determine what option suits you best and send them on time.
Step 03: Choosing a Template Will Make Everything Easy
Another tip that you should definitely keep in mind is that you should choose and use a template for your invoices. There are various programs such as Billdu that’ll allow you to choose a suitable template for your Aussie small business. By doing this, all you’ll need to do is to add the necessary information and you’ll be good to go. Besides this, it’ll also help you represent your brand in the right way, mostly because the bills will look more professional and formal.
Step 04: Don’t Make Mistakes
If you make frequent mistakes in your bills, it could create mistrust between your company and clients. After all, the bills are extremely important – especially if they’re large – so, you should do everything that you can to avoid making mistakes. Invoicing mistakes can occur quite often and they’re more common than many business owners think, which is why you should use billing software that’ll help you.
By using such software, it’ll automatically add the quotes, fees, and costs to the template. This means that using such programs can help you reduce the number of mistakes made, hence, you can make sure that you send the correct bill to your client. Additionally, this won’t only ensure that you have a good relationship with your clients, it’ll also save you a lot of time, meaning that you could focus on something else.
Step 05: Automation is The Key to Everything
There is a wide range of simple automation features that’ll make your invoicing faster and they’ll save you a lot of time. Automation doesn’t only mean automatic quote gathering, it offers so much more than this. For instance, you could opt for setting up recurring invoicing schedules, and if so, it’ll automatically charge your clients recurring fees. Additionally, you can set up reminders that’ll remind you of overdue payments.
You can also choose to process the bills online, mostly because your clients could pay them from any place and at any time by choosing a payment method that suits their needs. All of these things will be incredibly beneficial and by choosing this strategy, you could increase the chances of being paid on time. Automation is heavily present in the business world, which is why you should implement it in your company as well.
Step 06: Forget Papers, Move to The Cloud!
Last on our list, but equally as important as the other steps we mentioned is the fact that you should forget about paper and move to the cloud. Now, we don’t mean it literally, instead, we mean that you should opt for using a cloud platform where you’ll store all of your documents, including the invoices. Using such platforms will help you speed everything up, but it’ll also allow you to see the information you need from any place and at any time that you want.
Conclusion
Invoices and bills are two of the most important thing for any business.
By doing so, it’ll save you time and money, and more importantly, it can ensure that your clients trust you.
Since you now know what approach and steps you should take, you really shouldn’t lose your time – after all, in the business world, time does really equal money. Instead, you should go through our list once more and then start implementing changes for your invoicing and billing processes.
