The majority of business have now implemented electronic invoicing at its lowest level, such as manually attaching a PDF to an email and sending to the recipient. This was a great solution when it was released as it overcame the invoice challenges for its time. However, businesses have come a long way since then, and are now looking for faster and more streamlined approaches with less manual intervention.
So where does this leave the humble e-Invoice you may ask? Well, as good as it was when it was first introduced, many businesses now face the dilemma of the “excuse”! The excuse of ‘I never received it’, ‘it was in the spam’, ‘the email address is no longer active’, ‘that person has left’, the list goes on and you’re left with an ever growing overdue and debtors list.
So what’s the solution to keep up with the ever changing working environment and structure? Well it’s quite simple really. Just think back to your last invoice run and think how useful would it be to know if the emails were read, and how many were actually opened? This small but invaluable piece of knowledge could mean the difference between having a clear A/R balance and a partially cleared balance. –So let’s put this solution into a real world environment– 94% of your invoices arrive at the correct destination, and are opened, 7 days later you receive a report pointing out those unopened. Straight away you’re in a strong position to pursue the reason behind the unopened invoices, already you have saved yourself a lot of time trying to decipher who has or hasn’t received their invoices correctly, meaning you no longer have to wait to send overdue letters out before discovering the email address or person you been sending to is incorrect. This is known as Pro-Active invoice management. and is the best and simplest way to reduce your overall A/R Balance.
How can you simplify and streamline your invoicing and A/R process?
In this part I will discuss the use of GUID links. How this technology works is by storing documents in a digital store on premise or off premise with secure links attached to them.
Businesses have been investing vast sums of money and time into new software applications and workflows processes, only then to rely on old distribution techniques such as emails with attachments with no intelligent logic reporting on open rates. This has now all changed with the introduction of GUID links, which will not be caught up in spam filters or firewalls, record open rates and reduce bandwidth usage by 95%. GUID will also simplify admin time by allowing you to re-send invoices instantly, and reduce the time spent searching for the correct documents, thus improving the overall customer experience.
But I outsource my invoice collections!
This is becoming common practice in many businesses now, and GUID is a perfect way to allow your outsourcing company to deal with invoice queries such as re-sending without having to access your ERP or finance systems, and thanks to the intuitive web based interface training is minimal, and in a single click you can access overdue invoices based on date, value or category.
Using Symtrax as you digital transformation partner will ensure your business is always ahead of the competition.
