When people think about how small businesses make money, they often think about salespeople and marketing. A great deal of attention is focused on securing new customers and emphasizing the best features of assorted products and services. While those key functions bring in business unless you charge your customers upfront the real money is made in the invoicing. Make sure your AP team has all the automation advantages that other departments have by finding software that automatically sends and records movement on invoices.

Why should you automate your invoicing system?

The traditional way of sending bills, both online and offline, was usually supplemented by a team of callers who would chase down unpaid invoices and hold the customers accountable. Not only does that job have a history of being unpleasant and stressful, it's not a scalable way of making sure neglected invoices are unpaid. Here's how automation can help even before it gets to that point.

Create rules that guide reminder emails and any associated penalties.

Sending customers second invoices and reminders is almost always a tedious stressful job, especially if there are contractual penalties for lateness. But automated invoicing systems that email customers their invoices can be set up to send reminders, adjusted invoices with late fees, and other automatic messages. You can put those invoices on a timer so they can be sent precisely on time. Once a customer pays, their account is automatically taken off the timer.

Automatically generate the reports your finance team needs.

Instead of manually monitoring your business's unpaid invoices, you can build rules into the system to notify your employees when the invoices haven't been paid for five, fifteen, or thirty days. You can add additional rules that generate reports of severely overdue invoices for the CFO. Automated report creation doesn't just save employees time directly. It stops customers from slipping through the cracks and helps better regulate forecasts.

Contact the folio1 team for more ways to incorporate automation into your company's workflows.