Invoicing Innovations for SMEs

Are you looking to streamline your invoicing? Handling invoicing by hand is time-consuming and occasionally creates costly errors. Every year, new technologies and software are released to help SMEs with limited resources handle their invoicing more efficiently, avoid miscommunications, avoid accounting errors, and spend less time on paperwork. 

Here are a few we think you should know about:

Cloud-Based Invoicing

With the cloud, you can always have quick access to any invoices that you need to look over, even using an app on your phone to do so. You can get real-time updates about the status of your accounts receivables, too. Cloud-based invoicing eliminates the needs to have paper invoices as well as the cost to print, send and store them. It also makes sharing invoices across team members simple.

Online Payments

If you deliver invoices in person or send them through mail, online payments will be a significant upgrade for you. Online payments make things more convenient for your customer which can encourage them to pay you faster. With online payments, when your software detects that the payment has been made, your whole accounting system can be automatically updated.

Online payments are also ideal for international clients, especially because they are available 24/7.

Automation  

Many aspects of invoicing can be immediately performed by your software through automation. After your client’s appointment is completed, software can automatically send out their invoice without your input. Software can automatically remind clients about unpaid invoices, automatically update your accounting team about partial payments, and do so many more actions that otherwise you’d have to pay someone to perform.

Artificial Intelligence

You can take your invoicing to the next level with artificial intelligence. Some software offers predictive intelligence that can help you spot errors with invoicing, refine your estimating and billing processes, and even generate more revenue. Some artificial intelligence even offers tools to help you reconcile accounts, get payments from clients who are late, and encourage early or on-time payments. You may be surprised at all of the features invoicing software can offer through artificial intelligence.

Other Features

When you invest in invoicing software that offers any of the above, you will often also get access to other features that help your business be more successful. You may be able to track project completion, calculate customer lifetime value, see when your average customer pays and get better, up-to-date information about your cashflow. Chances are, invoicing software will help you see just how critical managing your invoices and accounts receivable is to the overall success of your enterprise.

Choose Invoice Factoring

Of course, you don’t have to do all of your invoicing yourself. At J D Factors, we can handle the more challenging aspects of managing your accounts receivables. You send your invoice to us instead of your client, we pay you within 24 hours, and we handle all of the further contact with your client. We follow-up, send reminders, collect payment, and even handle non-payment and bad debt. Reach out to us at J D Factors to make your invoicing simpler and more reliable than ever.

How Factoring Can Help Save Your Business from Financial Uncertainty

Managing cash flow always has its challenges, but during a pandemic it can be even more difficult. For most B2B businesses, instability creates unpredictable customer behaviour. Cancelled orders, delayed payments, and bankruptcies will all undermine your cashflow, and potentially even threaten your own business. Some small businesses are finding themselves negotiating with their larger customers who use Covid-19 as a reason to try to change payment terms.

If your cash flow has been a source of worry for the last few quarters, or you’re worried about the impact of even more lockdowns on your customers and their ability to pay, you should consider invoice factoring. Invoice factoring can help save your business from financial uncertainty, here’s how.

Cash in Your Hands

When you work with an invoice factoring company, you send your invoice out to the company. The factoring company pays you an agreed upon percentage of what you are owed, and then passes the invoice onto your customer. If you work with J D Factors, you’ll have payment for your invoice within 24 hours. That means that no matter how long it takes for your customers to pay, you’ll have the cash you need to:

• Buy more materials and inventory
• Pay your staff
• Pay your rent
• Invest in opportunities and innovative practices.

A strong cash flow is critical to keep running your business, which is critical during this financially difficult time.

Let Us Handle Collections

What happens when you have many more late payments than usual? Usually, you have to divert more of your resources, like money and staff time, to remind customers to pay. Stop chasing clients down! When you work with an invoice factoring company, you don’t need to waste your resources or threaten your relationships with your overdue clients. Leave all that headache to us. We will remind your customer to pay and if necessary, deal with collections, which can be an expensive process for you (and less so for us, because we have partnerships with outstanding collections agencies.)

Another benefit of having us handle the collections is that you won’t need to speak to your customers during the collection process, and they won't have the opportunity to bring up payment term changes with you.

Non-Recourse Factoring

Bankruptcy of your clients is a large risk in 2020, and likely will be moving into 2021. Forbes argues that more retailers are likely to go bankrupt in 2021, and other industries may be at risk too, especially as the Canadian government drops some of the protections it has offered businesses.

Bankrupt businesses do not have to bring your company down with them. J D Factors offers non-recourse factoring. That means if you have a customer who does not pay because they go bankrupt, we do not ask for the money we paid you for the invoice. You don’t have to return the funds, which means you can confidently use the money to run your business when you first receive it, even if you suspect that your client is in trouble. And, you don’t have to worry about absorbing the bad debt from a client’s bankruptcy, we will do that for you.

Non-recourse invoice factoring from J D Factors can help save your business during these financially difficult times. Reach out to us today to discuss how we can support you.