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Invoicing: Turning An Art Into A Science
 Not many companies spend time thinking about their invoicing processes and all of the intricacies of getting it right…that is until they have problems. Then you realize how complicated it really is to get it right. For instance, some clients complain that there is not enough detail to explain what they are being charged for. Some complain that there is too much information. Getting the correct billing rate for the work done can be problematic, not to mention very time consuming. Even more so when you have multiple agreements with a single client. Some clients want to be billed on a certain day of the month, some want to be invoiced as work is completed. Sometimes clients pay a down payment, and sometimes you need to bill for work in progress. The list goes on.
What all of these variations have in common is that they drive higher costs into your invoicing process and they also slow down cash flows. Higher costs can come from the manual activity necessary to calculate custom billing rates or from correcting inaccuracies that clients so kindly point out to you. Cash flows are affected because invoices aren’t sent when they could be sent. And if you are not billing when you say you will, you are likely teaching clients not to be in any hurry to pay you. Heck, if you can’t even bill on time, why should they rush to pay you?
ConnectWise PSA was built around the needs of small-to-medium size IT Solutions companies. That means that it was designed to eliminate or reduce manual activity, eliminate redundancy and speed up cash flows. The invoicing workflow is a prime example of the type of efficiencies you will gain with ConnectWise PSA. Our goal is to get your invoice into the hands of your clients as quickly as possible after the agreed upon billing time and give them professional, accurate and detailed enough information so that they pay you quickly. Now, that is functionality that will really pay off for you!
How Do You Know If You Have Invoicing Problems?
Take a look at the following list of questions. Answering as indicated on several of them may suggest invoicing processes and systems could be improved in your company:
- Can an invoice be sent out within minutes of a service ticket closure, if that is the agreed upon terms with a client?
- Can one client be invoiced different ways, depending on the work performed?
- Can automatic invoice calculations be set up regardless of the contractual agreement you have with your clients, and even if one client has multiple agreements to cover different types of work?
- Do completed tasks and activities, either project or service, automatically trigger the invoicing process?
- Do your billable people have to get involved in invoicing to validate bill rates?
- Is your solution customizable, so you can choose which invoices require advance approvals prior to sending to clients?
- Can your invoice approvers drill down into the detail to validate what was charged?
- Can your invoice approvers over-ride the amount billed? Are these changes captured in an audit trail?
- Can your solution support standard pricing structures, including fixed price, time and materials, WIP completed, milestone completion, prepaid retainers, block time and monthly managed service agreements?
- Can you easily send out invoices in small batches over the month to avoid getting lost in the end of month invoices many of your clients receive?
- Can you choose to either send email or paper invoices? Does your solution know your clients’ preferences?
- Can you choose the level of detail provided on the invoice for each of your clients? Can you provide a custom layout for each client’s invoices, if you so choose?
- Can you set up different invoices for different divisions or different locations in your company, and can this data be sent to different revenue categories in your accounting system?
- Does your solution provide system checks prior to the data being ported over to your accounting software, to ensure both systems are always in sync?
ConnectWise PSA Helps You Solve Invoicing Problems
Invoicing will become completely automated with ConnectWise PSA, saving your controller on average 6-14 hours per week and allowing billable employees to focus on revenue-generating activities. With ConnectWise PSA, you can:
- Eliminate manual calculations by setting up as many agreements as you want for each client and associating types of work to appropriate billing rates.
- Send invoices whenever you want, within minutes of a service ticket or project phase being completed or on a pre-determined schedule, based on agreements you have with clients for types of work performed.
- Customize the appearance of the invoices to suit individual client requirements for more or less detail.
- Send different invoices from different divisions or different subsidiary companies.
- Assure complete and total billing since all service and project time, expenses and product automatically flow through the invoicing wizard.
- Customize the approval process to route to the invoice creator, managers and/or controller, if you wish, prior to sending to your clients.
- See all the detail necessary to approve an invoice through use of ‘drill down.’
- Over-ride billing rates, either increasing or decreasing, or even zeroing out.
- See a complete audit trail for all changes made to invoices during the approval process.
- Automatically send clients either email or paper invoices, based on their preferences, and even make invoices available to them through their client portal access.
ConnectWise PSA is the easy answer to your invoicing problems.
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ConnectWise PSA: The Total Business Automation Solution for IT Solutions Companies
ConnectWise PSA is a complete suite of modules that automate and integrate every process in your IT business: Find & Win Opportunities; Capture, Plan & Schedule Won Deals; Manage Projects & Services; Track, Approve & Invoice; Analyze & Report; Integrate to Internal & External Applications. ConnectWise PSA is offered both as premise based or hosted (subscription based) solution.
Learn more. See all ConnectWise PSA Product Module Features.
The sole purpose of ConnectWise PSA is to give you transparency into and control over your business, a faster and higher cash flow, more revenues, greater profits and higher levels of client satisfaction.
See How ConnectWise PSA Helps You Solve Other Management Problems.
See How ConnectWise PSA Helps You Solve Your Workflow Problems.
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