Believe it or not, a lot of companies experience issues with their invoice process due to invoice format issues. Oftentimes, companies try to do too much within one invoice, but a clear and complete invoice format is the solution you need to help you get paid on time.
If you follow these basic steps, you can start to improve your process, and get paid faster. Some of these tips might seem obvious, but they are surprisingly often overlooked details.
- Contact Information: Make sure your business name, address and contact information including phone number and email are included.
- Customer Information: Ensure the organization that you’re billing is clearly stated, along with their physical address, email address and phone number.
- Invoice Number: An invoice number is key to ensure that you can track invoices and payments accordingly. Make it big and bold, so that it is easily identifiable by your customer, that way if there is a discrepancy, you can easily refer back to the invoice.
- Invoice Date: Always include the date. Similar to invoice number, this is a great referral point if you need it.
- Description: List the products of services supplied, along with the costs against each item so customers can see the detailed breakdown.
- Balance Owing: Most customers will want to see the cost before looking at the additional details, so always bold the balance or cost. Make sure that you’ve also included any discounts and appropriate tax.
- Reference or Purchase Order Number: If a customer has given a reference or purchase number, make sure that it is included on the invoice. This will increase your chances of being paid on time.
- Method of Payment: Communicate how you prefer to be paid. Here you can include links for credit card payments or your banking details. With OnePosting, you can actually link to the invoice portal, speeding up the payment process.
- Marketing Message: With OnePosting, you can also add a marketing message to your invoice, further pushing your brand and solution forward.
Although these items seem very straightforward, many businesses neglect to include the correct information that causes processing delays and creates headaches for your customers. It is important to remember that the clearer the invoice, the faster you will get paid.
With a solution like OnePosting, you can further enhance your processes including extracting the key invoice data in a format that works for your existing finance solution which in turn allows your team to focus on more productive tasks. Connect with us to find out how.
