10 Tips for Growing Startups on Invoice Management

With our experienced invoice management advice, you can improve your startup’s cash flow. Improve billing efficiency and effectiveness while driving growth.

Delivering invoices and making timely payments to vendors is a fundamental obligation of small business owners. Inappropriate billing and invoicing procedures can cause cash flow problems, strained relations with suppliers and consumers, and even legal action.

In organizations without a well-defined system in place, missing, invoices/partially complete, or proper invoices are prevalent. As your company grows, the number of invoices you must process grows. The volume of invoices is an issue for 82% of finance departments. Invoice management is a critical internal position for maintaining efficiency and strengthening corporate collaborations.

All organizations must invest in an efficient invoice management system to automate the invoicing process and reduce errors.

Continue reading to learn more about invoice management to eliminate invoicing errors and speed up your accounts payable and receivable systems.

What exactly is Invoice Management?

Invoice management comprises delivering bills to clients for goods and services acquired, as well as paying suppliers and vendors on time. It is the process of tracking and paying invoices that includes receiving the invoice, recording it, verifying its accuracy, paying invoices, and updating a payment record.

In general, there are two approaches to invoice management: manually and automatically. Since everything can be done online, why shouldn’t your invoicing management system evolve to keep up with the times?

As a result, having an invoice management system in place can help you automate most of your invoicing activities, saving you a lot of stress, time, and money.

These systems include an extensive array of functionalities, including pre-made invoice templates, alerts and notifications regarding forthcoming invoices, intuitive interfaces, direct bank integration, automated tax computation, and much more.

The accounts payable team frequently handles invoices. The accounts payable team ensures that bills are generated on time and that suppliers are paid accurately. The accounts payable team typically collaborates with other teams to ensure that businesses have the resources they require. You can save a lot of time and money by processing invoices ten times faster with invoice management software. Invoice management software can bring various benefits to a business.

10 Ways to Improve Invoice Management

Real-time tracking of Accounts Payable and Receivable processes.

Examine your accounts payable and receivable procedures thoroughly once a quarter. Once you’ve implemented an invoice management system, it’s critical to keep track of it. Make certain that your company has the best framework in place to sustain a steady cash flow. Consider giving electronic payment options and reviewing the terms regularly. Every week—or even day—matters for a small business trying to grow and succeed.

Determine payment conditions with vendors ahead of time

As you add new vendors to your list, consider how your payment cycle will fit their bills. Remember this before you sign any agreements.

Speak with the new vendors. Describe your payment schedule as well as any special facts about how your company regularly pays its debts. Before you acquire their services, ensure that your new suppliers and vendors accept your payment terms. If you can’t reach an agreement, think about dealing with different vendors.

Real-time receipt payments are preferred over end-of-month payments.

All payments, whether received or created, should be recorded in your accounting journal or program. Real-time bookkeeping and automated accounting technologies make this possible.

With the support of current financial reports, you can solve any payment difficulties or inquiries. Customers are more likely to pay on time if they understand what is expected of them ahead of time and have accepted the terms. The terms of many small enterprises are included with the first invoice. When beginning a project or collaborating with someone, it is significantly more productive to discuss terms upfront.

Purchase Accounting Software

Your invoice management system’s ultimate goal should be to integrate your accounting software with your AP and AR systems. Even better, it should only run on one platform.

This is referred to as financial operations or FinOps. Furthermore, it is critical to maintain adequate cash flow and a broad view of your finances, not only those related to vendor earnings and costs.

Purchasing high-quality accounting software is critical for optimizing your accounting process. The best invoice management software solutions make it simple to automate the most basic phases of the process.

Create a detailed information checklist for each invoice.

Your billing software should prompt you to enter all relevant information. This ensures that your customer and their accounts payable team have access to the following in order to expedite their payable process and finalize your payment:

• Customer
• Invoice Number
• Invoice Date
• Terms of Payment: modes of payment and the estimated time of payment; or Due Date: the day you plan to receive payment
• Invoice Template
• Sales Representative (if applicable)
• Details about the product or service you’re invoicing

Determine the schedule to send invoices to maximize your cash flow.

Instead of waiting for payment until the project is completed, ask your customer or client to pay you in instalments. You can, for example, request payments every month or at the end of each project phase.

If you have clients who have multiple ongoing projects or orders, set realistic billing intervals, such as weekly or monthly. If clients know you expect bills at a given time and will respond promptly, your accounts receivable period may be reduced.

Integrate many payment methods into the invoice management system.

Including an Internet payment gateway in your invoice management software accelerates the invoicing process even further. By linking your invoicing management software with a payment platform, you may save time and keep a precise record of all payments. You won’t have to run to the bank every time a payment is due, and you’ll be able to pay more promptly.

Automate the approval procedure.

When employing an effective invoice management application, you can request that the program automate approvals by your business standards. Because everything is done online, approvals may be given from any location. As a result, several hours and administrative delays in approvals will be saved.

Integrate accounting software or ERP with invoice management software.

Manual data movement will be removed if your invoice management software is automatically synchronized with accounting and ERP systems. Modern invoice management software should be capable of extracting error-free data from your books and transferring it to conveniently accessible, user-friendly sheets that can be analyzed. Without a doubt, boosting automation in this area will improve your company’s billing procedure.

Audit your books regularly.

Once everything is in place, it is critical to maintain a check on the invoicing management system. Audit the system if you notice any abnormal cash flow patterns.

• Do electronic payments work? Should you look elsewhere if not?
• Is your processing system prone to errors or unnecessary delays?
• Has a vendor submitted several invoices?
• Can we improve the account-clearing procedure’s automation? These are the kinds of questions you should always be asking yourself.

In conclusion

The old method of managing invoices has proven to be unproductive. Pen and paper accounting is inefficient and adds unnecessary staff hours and stress. A solid invoice management system can help you handle payments and avoid invoicing problems.

With an all-inclusive invoice management plan, you can have greater control over your cash flow and reduce the costs associated with working capital development.

Even if you don’t have the funds to invest in fancy-invoice management software, you can still encourage faster payments from your clients by following best practices such as frequently using templates, strategically scheduling invoices, and keeping an eye on your accounts receivable so you can send timely reminders.