A Few Things First-Time FinTech Adopters of Online Invoicing Tools Should Be Asking Themselves
The absence of a feature-rich online invoicing tool can reduce business operational efficiencies. Gone are the days for companies to send out printed invoices or for that matter, create invoices on a case to case basis. A big part of modernizing and automating core business functions also includes identifying the right financial reporting and invoicing tools that help maintain business efficiencies while giving a real-time assessment of cash flow and liquidity.
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A Case for Using Online Invoicing Tools
Online invoicing tools facilitate the easy creation, scheduling and sending of client and vendor invoices. With the help of automated online invoicing systems, finance comptrollers/CFOs and their teams can streamline payment followups while ensuring faster and easier payments, these systems offer better invoice tracking facilities highlighting which invoices have been paid, which ones are overdue, along with alerts on your own overdue payments.
The reason that there has been a growing trend which it comes to adoption and usage of online invoicing systems is because these tools reduce the burden and dependency on paperwork (an ideal point for a remote-first and digital-work environment), and these tools prevent the need to dig through piles of old invoices to track past financial discrepancies (for instance, during an audit) since most financial data is keyed into a cloud system.
Here are a few questions businesses or first-time fintech adopters should ask themselves before implementing an invoicing software:
Should I opt for a Free versus Paid Software Solution?
A common factor that binds innovators in the SaaS marketplace are free trials. But free trials of software packages will usually not provide customers with a complete suite of services they may need to solve a real business challenge. However, every SaaS offering does give users the option of free trials to help them ascertain which product is a best-fit for their requirement while also allowing them to compare features between packages.
Free trials help business users make a better choice. Free trials won’t allow users to actually create and send invoices in most cases and they won’t integrate with the rest of the fintech or accounting applications in use by the organization.
Quick Tip-> A paid package always provides greater functionalities viz a viz a free one!
When Evaluating Packages, Are you Choosing One That Fits Your Business Needs And Also the Stage of your Business?
The easiest way to choose the most appropriate package for your business is by correlating the package to the stage of your business. Tools like Xero or FreeAgent are specifically built for smaller teams and businesses and could fit well for use in startups or small to mid-sized companies. QuickBooks is more expensive and might be a better fit for a more established business or enterprise structure.
Which Invoicing Tools can Address The Core Challenges and Lags of Your Existing Team?
Before reading up about the leading invoicing software solutions available in the market, it is crucial for finance comptrollers and teams to know which lags exist in their current financial management process, finding a tech solution that is built to address those specific challenges that the team is faced with will help ensure better ROI from the technology spend.
For instance, if the team needs a solution that allows better real-time visibility on the status of debtors or outstanding invoices, one software might have stronger capabilities in this area when compared to another.
If the team realizes that they need a solution to help follow through on late payments, certain automated invoicing software like FreeAgent are built to help automate followups for late payers.
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Is It Better to Choose Tools that Help Adhere to Local Regulations?
Automated invoicing software is meant to reduce the time spent on maintaining invoice records and chasing payments. But each state/country has to abide by a different set of fiscal regulations and laws when it comes to business payments, adjustment of taxes, filing of records, etc. Apps that are built taking into account local regulations will make it that much easier for finance and accounting teams to comply to required standards in a timely manner because it will reduce the dependence on them to manually ensure everything is in place as per multiple compliance norms.
The Future of Invoicing is Automation
Automated payment collection platforms help cut the amount of time administrative and finance teams spend on invoicing formalities including planning and processing adhoc and other recurring payments. Finance teams in modern digitally transformed companies have already experienced the benefits of streamlining every part of their finance and reporting process with the right invoicing automation.
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