One of the most challenging things that SMBs face during their start-up’s take-off phase or in general is the delay in invoice payment. As a result, many businesses, estimated at around 54%, generally expect that the invoice they are sending is bound to be paid either late or closer to the expiry date. This trend affects the cash flow of businesses and nudges them to go for invoice factoring, in order for them to not miss any potential opportunity because of low cash flow. This problem often arises when things are not discussed in advance or when businesses don’t use relevant software for invoicing. Therefore to make things clear, we have crafted this article to address all concerns associated with invoicing ranging from effective invoicing to payment collection, and features offered by the Zoho Invoice application that SMB’s can leverage to smoothen the cashflow. For Zoho Invoice implementation or customization and integration with Zoho analytics, you can contact Zoho Consultant at Techloyce.
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What Is Effective Invoicing?
Effective invoicing is a process, where using multiple technology SMB’s ensure the invoices are sent promptly or timely to the clients.
Like we said above, the ratio of invoice payment is generally low and most of the time companies complain to spend a lot of time on following-up missed invoices. The average time a company spent until marking an invoice expires is 15 days of follow-up. And, another reason that heavily contributes to the invoice payment delay is not using the right tool for collecting payment. Since we are living in the era of the digital revolution where most of the purchase is done via smartphone and payment is made digitally, hence using outdated technology or invoicing template can impact your business. Therefore, it is important to optimize your invoicing, payment collection by creating an effective invoicing strategy.
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Challenges Faced By SMSs
When it comes to payment collection, the process is not a smooth ride for many businesses. For instance, you are running a subscription box business, where you are offering your customized boxes to clients on a recurring basis and at the same time charging them on an interval basis. Hence, a business that is either operating manually or not using the automation software complain about
- Late & missed payment
- Unpaid invoices
- Problem in establishing consistent brand image
- Excessive time on invoice creation, tracking, and follow-up
All of these concerns that we have just mentioned be resolved with Zoho Invoice implementation. It is an account application that is designed to provide complete back-end support to the finance department with invoice lifecycle management from creation of quotes to invoice, allocating unique invoice numbers, and tracking date till marking it paid or non-paid.
More when we talk about the effective invoice we mean customizing the invoice to disseminate a consistent brand image. Some of the effective invoicing guidelines include drafting clear and concise invoices with accurate details on products or services, with tax information, company information, client information, etc. In addition to this, it is important that the layout, payment date, and other information should adhere to the policies and commitments of clients with the company. At the same time, sending plain paper with a lengthy invoice is not considered professional. As a result, many clients either consider it spam or contact the invoice issuer to verify the information. Therefore, it is advised that to enhance the invoice effectiveness, utilize the space cautiously, and include a visual element to make it intuitive. Lastly, don’t forget to schedule reminders.
Creating an effective invoice process manually may seem daunting to you, but with Zoho Invoice, you can make this process easy. Here are some features that this application offers.
5 Ways To Leverage Zoho Invoice To Create Effective Invoices
New Invoice Creation – The first feature that we have priorities to enlist here in the new invoice creation. This not only means creating a new invoice from scratch, rather it means customizing everything in your invoice ranging from offering invoice payment options in the native currency and language of your clients. Moreover, you can automate recurring invoice generation with custom workflow and a custom schedule on when to send and follow-up on the invoice. This reduces the effort on the part of eCommerce or subscription businesses etc. who frequently have to generate invoices, anytime, 24/7.
Invoice Customization – In addition to invoice generation, it also offers an invoice customization feature where businesses can utilize the pre-build invoice templates, or customize one to create a custom template with customized information from header to footer and background image to its look and feel. Besides, by integrating Zoho with HubSpot you can create festive templates and automatically use them.
Dashboard & Metrics – The most difficult thing for businesses is tracking the progress of an invoice or utilizing the statistics on the number of paid invoices, missed and late invoice payment ratio, Zoho Invoice offer integration with Zoho Analytics. The integration provides a dashboard to the user where every key information on invoices e.g. paid, pending, missed, or rejected quotes are displayed. Moreover, by using Zoho BI and Zoho Zia you can drive insights from the raw information with voice commands and generate reports.
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Automation & Personalization – Lastly we have the automation and personalization feature of Zoho CRM. This is governed by custom workflow creation where one can create an automation rule with all ifs-and-then that is applicable on new invoice generation to the sending recurring invoices to the clients. Additionally, by using the data collected by Zoho CRM you can customize the invoice by including new product recommendations or coupons and discounts to either upsell or cross-sell products or services.
Conclusion
The most important thing for businesses in achieving revenue stability. With invoicing and payment collection software you can automate the invoice collection process and lower the late invoice payment or missed invoices with proactive communication via reminders, notification, and emails. For information on Zoho integrations, contact Zoho Consultants today!
