Controversial way to get invoices paid on time
1. Auto Debit ( The controversial way to get invoices paid on time)
Most banks across the world provide an auto debit feature. An auto debit feature allows you to pull money from a customer’s bank account automatically without any customer’s intervention. In the US this is called ACH payments, in Europe, this method of payment is called European direct debit.This method is a pretty neat and easy way to get invoices paid on time.
To be able to enable this kind of payment you will need to work with a third-party service provider like payorcrm to add this feature. Auto-debiting helps companies reduce a lot of overhead by cutting down on any follow up required to receive payments.
Most companies pass on the benefits of savings in overhead from auto-debits to their customers by providing customers a discount if they are opting to pay by auto-debit.
To ensure that the customer interests are taken care of the auto debiting software should allow you to put a maximum limit on auto debit and also provide the customer a notification every time there is an auto debit with an option to reverse a payment or stop a payment at any given time.
Autodebit can be enabled for both credit card payments as well as bank to bank transfers
See tips from Mondelez on invoicing them
2. Get invoices paid on time by ensuring that your invoice has detailed information (non-controversial)
When invoicing your customer, Ensure that the invoice has detailed information on what you are invoicing them for.Basic information that should be available are
1)Purchase order number – Your customer most likely has an approval process for any purchase order.The purchase order numbers allows your customer to check who, when has approved the purchase
2)Invoice and line item information – Your customer needs to know what product the invoice is meant for.To help customer understand the same, provide the list of items with quantity, unit price along with discount information and taxes
3)Payment information – Provide your customer information on how they can pay you.if you allow your customers to pay electronically, provide them a link to the invoice which would allow them to pay you.You could also provide bank account info to allow them to pay you bank transfer AP software
4)POC details – provide detailed point of contact details including phone number and email id of the contact who can be contacted by your company in case of corrections or errors in the invoice
Also published on Medium.