by Emma Uchendu
How many payment options do you have in your business? Would you choose online invoicing over paper invoicing?
Payment collection, invoicing and debt management are some major nightmares of most small business owners.
Invoicing and debt management can be a complicated process. It doesn’t matter the kind of business you run. Whether you are a small business owner, a large firm that deals on a mixture of projects or you run a retainer-based business, managing invoices and following up on them is simply tough.
One of the purposes of invoicing is to hasten the collection of money from customers. But this is not as easy as it sounds. A lot of business owners are frustrated each day by the whole process. A lot of businesses have folded up as a result of having a huge part of their fund tied up in bad debt. This is as a result of unpaid invoices and poor debt management.
Here are three simple hacks that will help you simplify your invoicing and get your money back faster than you ever expected:
Go Online
Online invoicing and payment collection are major ways to easily collect payment for products sold or services rendered. It increases the speed at which you send invoices to your customers and collect money. There is no better method that will guaranty you a speedy, faster and cost-effective system but online invoicing.
A lot of business owners still adopt the paper method of invoicing. While this is not bad, I think you are doing yourself a great disservice in this decade by not taking your business invoicing online.
Paper invoicing can be frustrating and time-consuming. You would also have to battle with handling bulk of papers each day and stressing yourself on how to safeguard them against loss.
But with the online invoicing platform and cloud-based accounting tools like Sage and QuickBooks, you can easily access everything about your invoicing, customer and account receivables in a single dashboard and your data immortalized on the cloud. It also tracks and manages your invoices by automatically flagging each invoice red when due or overdue.
Spell Out Your Terms and Conditions
Spelling out your terms and conditions clearly is one way you can make collections of payment faster and recover your money speedily from customers and clients as a small business owner. But a lot of business owners fail to do this because they are scared their clients will run away or won’t patronize them anymore.
That’s wrong. The earlier you spell out your terms and conditions, the better for your business.
These are a few things to consider or do:
- State how long it takes to deliver an item or service.
- How you accept payment and which payment methods you use.
- The initial deposit amount a client or customer can pay.
- State bonuses customers get to enjoy for making an early payment. For example 2% on any payment made at the spot.
- Charge a penalty on overdue debt.
Accept Money From Multiple Payment Options
The multiple payment options are one way to improve your business invoicing and, in turn, speed up payment. It makes it easier and faster for you to accept money from your customers or clients as a small business owner. A small business owner who uses multiple payment options receives money 3x faster than those who use just one means.
Businesses who stick to only one payment option exposes themselves to disaster and will have their funds tied down for a very long time by customers. But adopting multiple payment options as a small business will aid faster payment. It will also ensure the easy automation of your business payment collection system. It will further increase the chances of being paid faster before the invoice due date.
Some of the payment options you might consider include Credit cards, POS, and online payment like Paystack, Flutterwave, and so on. These can be easily adopted into any kind of business, whether product or service-based without much cost.
How many payment options do you have in your business? Would you choose online invoicing over paper invoicing? Let’s discuss this in the comment section.
