Did you know that roughly 20% of all small businesses fail in their first year of operation?
Running a business is no small feat. If you’ve been a business owner for very long, you know that there are countless challenges that you have to overcome each year. But what could be responsible for such dismal statistics?
Is it poor planning? Is it a lack of investor funding? Or is it simply bad timing? How about an ineffective billing system?
While any one of the above problems can cause trouble for a business, perhaps the most detrimental issue is when your customers fail to pay you for your products or services. And when your billing information system is inefficient, defective, or out-of-date, that becomes a problem just waiting to happen.
Building a successful business comes with enough problems and challenges on its own. You certainly don’t need to invite additional problems, like not getting paid. But what are the specific business benefits of a great billing system?
That’s what we’ll be exploring in this article. Grab a pen and keep reading to learn all about automatic billing system software and its benefits.
A good billing system will give you more than one way to charge your customers and clients for your services. And a great billing system will make sure that payments are processed as quickly as possible.
The purpose of a billing system is to notify your customers when a payment is due and to process those payments without delay. But without a proper billing system, you’ll be left to contact customers yourself and beg for payment. Then, you’ll have to either wait for them to mail you a check or generate a time-consumer PayPal payment request.
Neither is an efficient way to run a business, which is why good billing software is so important.
Long gone are the days of jotting down customer details in a physical notebook. Today, customers expect businesses to maintain information on them automatically, and to be able to provide that information easily.
Comprehensive billing software won’t only keep track of current orders and shipments. It will also store relevant details for each customer, and allow updates for those details (such as email addresses) easily.
As a busy business owner, you can’t afford to personally check on every one of your clients to make sure they're paying on time. If you have missing payments, money is slipping through the cracks, it should be up to your billing system to notice this and respond.
Not only would it be inconvenient for you to contact each late customer, but it could also be embarrassing for them. Most people don’t miss payments on purpose, and they may feel awkward if you confront them about it. Having an automatically-generated email go out to your tardy customers instead can work better for everyone.
Everyone likes being paid, but most people don’t like writing invoices. It’s not exactly the exciting work everyone dreams of who becomes an entrepreneur.
This is another area where good billing solutions shine. Instead of dealing with the unpleasant task of writing invoices yourself, good software will generate invoices for you. Once you start to benefit from this kind of feature, you’ll never want to go back.
Businesses have complications, and they become even more confusing when relevant details and tools are across multiple software programs. To avoid this, a comprehensive billing tool will include everything you need to charge and handle customers.
Better still, some billing platforms integrate with platforms for communications and marketing. This adds an additional layer of convenience to your business processes.
You deserve to be paid what you’re worth, but when you’re bogged down in invoices and missed charges, it’s easier to assign a flat rate for everything.
Instead, proper billing solutions will keep track of prices and payment plans for you. This means you can charge more for additional value without additional complexity. It also means your payment systems will be more flexible and convenient for your customers.
Most billing system features apply to just about everybody. Whether you’re selling cheap ebooks or luxury timepieces, everyone deserves a swift and convenient billing process.
But when you are offering high-end services to wealthy clients, the customer experience becomes even more important. You might get away with a subpar experience if you’re selling discount goods, but high-end clients expect only the best.
That’s why you shouldn’t settle for anything but the best when it comes to billing software. Learn more about wealth manager billing from Redi2 Technologies here.
There are a lot of costs in operating a business, and it can be tempting to cut corners on things behind the scenes. But as you can see by now, your billing system should never be something you cut corners on. It can literally mean the difference between going broke and getting paid.
There’s a lot you have to learn when you run a business, and it can be hard to know where to go for information. For top expert advice, answers to common questions, and more, read our business section.
