Since setting up this firm in 2014, I’ve found a lot of smaller businesses have a very British attitude to invoicing, we raise our invoices on day X each month.
The problem is that day X might have a tight deadline job come in, or a family crisis or a kids show one month. What do you think small business owners put first, is it the tight deadline job come in, or a family crisis or a kids show or the invoicing?
Yes you’re right, it is generally everything except the invoicing. So why do you wait until a certain day to raise your invoices?
What is wrong with “Invoice on the day you complete the job or on the day you agree to do the work.”
Why do I say that? The longer you delay in sending out the invoice, the longer a customer feels they can take to pay. Their thought process is “he couldn’t be bothered charging me for 4 weeks, so I can’t be bothered to pay him for 4 weeks”.
Done daily this is very manageable and means the impression you create with your customers is “Wow, not only are their products/service fabulous, they even sent the invoice promptly, they must be on the ball, I had better pay promptly”.
I recently gave a talk at BizMums in Winsford, Cheshire, we were discussing how to make the most out of your invoice and I raised this point. One of the attendees said she worked to a set date to raise an invoice and quite often something of a higher priority did come up so her invoices were late.
We discussed her raising the one off job invoices at the time the job is completed, she realised it made sense and that her cash flow would be improved and that the impact of a single event on a set day wouldn’t be as catastrophic to her business.
When do you invoice and why?
4 Comments
Claire Brotherton
I invoice after the job usually, but I don’t always get them sent promptly.
I would like to find a good online invoicing solution as making them up manually isn’t fun iand is time-consuming.
rachael
Hi Claire, thanks for your comment.
Manually raising invoices, shouldn’t be that time consuming once you have your template set up. If you want advice on that, then give me a call, let’s see how you can save your time.
If you want to go for an on-line solution, I know lot’s of people who use the following 3 systems
Kashflow is an online accounting system, you can get a 30 day free trial and if you sign up it does have an on-line payment option. More details at https://www.kashflow.com/
Xero is another on-line option that customers and suppliers recommend.More details at https://www.xero.com/uk/
Impkiss I know Julia personally who started Impkiss, it’s aimed at small and start up s with no accounting knowledge and all support is UK based. More details at http://impkiss.com/
All of the above are complete on-line accounting systems and each has it’s own benefits/downsides – you just need to find the one that’s right for you.
As I said earlier, if you want to chat about making manual invoicing easier, or any of the above options then give me a call.
Cheers
Rachael
Rachael Chiverton Ltd | Credit Control
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