How To Get Invoices Paid Faster

If there’s one thing all lawyers have in common, whether they’re personal injury lawyers or criminal defense lawyers, they all want to have their invoices paid faster. Sure, your clients have a certain amount of days to pay each invoice, but wouldn’t it be better if your clients paid as soon as they received their invoice? The following tips will make it easier and more convenient for your clients to not only pay their invoices, but to pay them faster.

Under Promise, Over Deliver

The secret to getting your invoices paid in a more timely manner actually starts before you even send out an invoice. The other tips in this article will help you create less confusing invoices, but this tip will help you get paid regardless of what you do next.

When you under promise and over deliver, you’ve just managed client expectations and then exceeded your own words. Clients aren’t only wowed, but they’re more confident in your abilities, more satisfied with your services, and therefore, much more likely to get that invoice paid right away. Your clients will feel as though you went above and beyond for them; you set a goal that everybody was okay with and then blew it out of the water completely. If that doesn’t make your clients happy and willing to pay right away, then nothing will.

Simplify Invoices

Many lawyers like to think that their invoice turn past due because clients are disgruntled or cheap, when in reality, most people are just confused. Typical invoices have a lot of business jargon that can be lost on the general population – and not because they lack the vocabulary, but because invoices haven’t received much of a makeover in the past few decades. Make it easier on your clients by sending them a simplified invoice.

Start by replacing all the business talk with more understandable terms. “Payment upon receipt” is one of those terms that creates a lot of confusion. Many people are unsure if that means payment is due immediately or if it’s due anytime after the receipt. Furthermore, using “net 15” or “net 30” doesn’t make it any more understandable. Instead, try writing the date the invoice was sent and the date it is due. There’s no questions about an invoice that was received on the first of the month and is due on the 15th of the month.

You can also simplify invoices by leaving itemization out altogether, unless specifically asked for and only using simple terms when doing so. If you’ve thought up a fancy way to itemize for listening to voice mails, take it off. If you’re charging for copying documents and you’ve listed it as “Documentation Duplication,” you might as well state what it really is, leave it off altogether, or get ready for a lot of annoying phone calls having to explain yourself. The easier the invoice is to read, the more likely a client will pay it faster.

Send Friendly Reminders

Many invoicing software available allows you to send reminders to clients who haven’t yet paid their invoice. Create an email that sends a gentle, friendly reminder telling the client where they can pay, how they can pay, and how many days they still have left to pay. If this is an automated email, rather than a personal one, clients might understand that it’s simply an email from a computer and not their disgruntled lawyer constantly reminding them to be paid.

In your friendly reminders, you should also use simple language, include any relevant information, and make it as short and sweet as possible. If your clients are already distracted from paying an invoice, you don’t want to distract them even further with a lengthy and complex email.

Use The Right Wording

Faster invoicing can all be in the way you say it. Imagine a mom and pop shop where the owners always tell you to “come back now, ya here?” every time you leave. It’s personable, inviting, and makes you feel more at ease about the money you just spent. By applying the same mentality to your invoices, you might be able to provide the same comfort for your clients.

Use phrases like “please” and “thank you” to win your clients over and make invoices less scary. End each invoice with a salutation like “We appreciate your business” or “Thank you for your payment.”

Take It Online

The final obstacle in getting your invoices paid faster is that they’re simply not convenient to pay. If you’re still sending paper invoices and expecting paper checks in return, your clients might be frustrated with the antiquated methods you’re using. There are plenty of ways to upgrade your invoicing process and speeding up your payment system as a result.

Many of the leading accounting programs available include an invoicing system where you can customize your own invoices and send them out through email. A lot of these programs also connect with online payment options like PayPal and Intuit. With e-billing and e-payment, your clients could be paying as soon as they receive invoices because they’re able to do it all rom their computer.

If you’ve been stressing about when your clients are paying invoices (and when they’re not paying invoices!), you might have a problem with the invoicing system itself. Make the whole process as fluid and accessible as possible to have more clients paying in a more timely manner.

Written by Pete Wise for the Douglas and London Law Firm; whom represent clients across the entire US. They have decades of history as an New York law firm and I help by posting to my facebook page and writing for the firm.

A Simple Guide to Business Fuel Cards

Currently you may be using your company credit card for your business fueling needs, but you’ve considered using a fuel card for your business. But you don’t really understand everything that business fuel cards entail, so you continue to just use your credit card for fuel costs.

If that is your scenario, you are making a mistake. There are many benefits to businesses using fuel cards, especially when they have several company cars they are paying to fuel up, or if they have a fleet of vehicles they use for their company.

To help you understand a bit more, here is a simple guide to business fuel cards.

How do Fuel Cards for Business Work?

First off, let’s discuss how business fuel cards actually work. Fuel cards for businesses are very similar to normal fuel cards. In essence, they are like a credit card that you use to purchase your fuel with. You make all of your fuel purchases on your fuel card. And then once a month you pay your fuel card payment (just like you would a credit card payment for your credit card purchases).

But especially with business fuel cards, there are great savings associated with using this type of card over a credit card for purchasing your fuel.

What are the Benefits of Fuel Cards for Business?

Of course companies offering business fuel cards also offer many benefits to incentivise businesses using their cards. Here are some of the benefits of fuel cards for businesses:

1. Discounts

Many companies that offer fuel cards for businesses will have contracts with many different fuel suppliers. These relationships enable the fuel card companies to offer discounts to their users. So, when you have a good business fuel card, you will usually be able to save a lot of money in your company fuel costs by gaining access to discounts at many different fuel suppliers.

2. Customer Care Number

Some business fuel card companies will offer a toll free number that will offer not only customer care services, but also driver support for users of the card (to help them find near fueling stations, etc).

3. Reporting

If you work with a good business fuel card supplier, they should have some good reporting options for you. This will help you better track your company fuel use, minimize fuel fraud and overuse within your company, and better track your fuel expenses.

4. Better Tracking

Not only are you getting very detailed reporting on your company’s fuel costs (broken down by car/driver), but you will be able to keep your fuel expenses separate from your other business expenses (as opposed to all bundled together with all of the other expenses on your credit card). When you use fuel cards for business, you will receive one itemized invoice from your fuel card company each month. This will allow you to track and budget your fuel costs and usage completely separately.

About the author: Nicole is a blogger who writes about money saving tips & tricks.

How To Cut Logistics Costs

In the current climate of widespread financial uncertainty, many businesses all over the world are looking for ways to reduce costs. One of the most tempting ways for employers to save money is to implement wage restraint, but this comes with risks attached. For one thing, if many employers embark on a policy of wage restraint at the same time, there is a chance that this will merely exacerbate economic weakness by dampening down consumers’ purchasing power. It may also mean that other inefficiencies elsewhere in the organisation go unexamined. If you’re feeling the pinch and want to look at where you can save money, you could do worse than take a closer look at your supply chain. There are often hidden logistics inefficiencies which could cost your business money – which is something few can afford at the present time.

Steps to take to increase efficiency

There are a number of steps you can take to ensure that your supply chain is more efficient. Firstly, you should look at identifying and eliminating supply chain bottlenecks where possible. You should ensure that you review your business’ supply chain network periodically to ensure that everything is running as it should be. If you do identify any potential problems, you can then set about addressing them. You can eliminate any bottlenecks in your supply chain by ensuring that documentation and regulatory compliance is up to scratch, redesigning networks and reconsidering vessel planning.

You should also be aware of how easy it is for detention fines to mount up. The odd fine here and there shouldn’t prove too much of a problem, but if these issues keep cropping up then you really ought to address them. Look closely at carrier bills and identify where in the supply chain such problems are occurring. This should then enable you to make the required adjustments and thereby resolve the issue. Shifting to another mode of transport may also be a good idea. In some cases, you may be able to switch from air transport to sea transport, which is generally considerably cheaper. You should keep a close eye on your logistics operations in order to identify such opportunities.

Reducing Costs

Another way in which you can make your supply chain more efficient is to reduce inventory at manufacturing sites, warehouses and ports. Supply chain visibility is a key issue here, and if your logistics operation is too opaque you may find it more difficult to address these problems. Make sure you have reliable information about orders, and then you can start to trim your inventory however you see fit.

Performance management tools can prove crucial to the smooth operation of a supply chain, so make sure you have a system in place which is up to the job. A robust performance management process can significantly enhance the efficiency of your logistics network, allowing you to improve performance through the effective management of providers and critical cycle times. In addition, the use of postponement strategies can help you tackle out-of-stock issues as well as reducing forecasting errors, which are a major bugbear of many businesses all over the globe.

Guest post contributed by Simon Belfield, an avid blogger currently working and writing for a Eurotunnel Freight company.

Pros And Cons Of Third Party Logistics

Third party logistics, also known as 3PL, is an important part of many businesses that deal in transportation of goods, warehousing and similar operations.  Setting up a system internally can take up time and resources that most companies don’t have, which is why third party logistics becomes the natural solution.

What Is 3PL?

3PL or third party logistics, refers to assisting companies with warehouse services and solutions, management of transportation of goods, distribution as well as any related technology that will result in cost efficiency.

Pros

3PL offers quite a few benefits to companies that decide to use this type of service.  Perhaps the primary benefits of 3PL are overall savings in cost and in time.  These companies will also realize a higher quality of product shipment and distribution.

Delegating important responsibilities to a third party is always going to save valuable time, and that is certainly the case when it comes to third party logistics.  The fact that you are using a specialized company with expertise in the field means you can also have peace of mind that it is getting done right.

It’s common to think that a company using a 3PL provider will ultimately lose control over its goods during transport, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

The cost savings comes from a 3PL provider managing the entire distribution chain and always selecting optimum routes and means of transportation.  They can also combine several cargos within one vehicle, only charging you for the portion of the vehicle space your products are taking up.

A skilled and experienced 3PL provider will ensure that there is no delay in the distribution of resources and can often offer customized warehouse services to each individual client.

Cons

Naturally, everything is not perfect with the third party logistics system.  If you enlist the services of a third party logistics company that has never worked with products like your before, you may incur some losses at the start.  The company may be skilled an experienced overall, and you may see the gains later on, but those initial losses will still be seen as a negative.

Some businesses will also see handing over possession and losing physical access to their products as a con of the 3PL system.  That is why it is important to look into the company beforehand, and to ensure the method of communication  works for you.  If you feel that you will always have an open line of communication, that loss of product possession may not seem like such a big deal.

Paula Knottingham knows the impact that third party logistics can have on a company. It can help a business become more cost effecient quickly, which will save the business money in the long term. She always trusts 3PL Links for all of her third party logistic needs. They offer a variety of srvices such as supply chain management, warehouse solutions and the best frieght forwarder Toronto has to offer.

How E-Forms Have Changed Business Forever

For forward looking businesses, e-forms have changed the way that documents are handled and information collected. E-forms have had a positive impact on the expenditures made by companies for document processing. E-forms reduce the costs of form handling, sharing, filing, storage and printing. Use of E-forms dramatically reduces errors and improves the quality of entered data through the use of automatic validation for every type of form. E-forms allow the imposition of a complete audit or approval trail and require no special training for staff, clients or customers. Using e-forms forces data, at time of entry, to be formatted correctly and consistently, allowing data to be saved automatically in a centralized, digitized manner. Saved E-forms remain available for future review, processing or analysis which saves work time, effort and company expenditures.

With the advent of the personal or desktop type computers, many business gurus predicted the day of the paperless office had arrived. It has been thirty years since those proclamations and only now, thanks to the increased use of E-forms, can that statement be considered true.

E-Forms are Staff and Use Friendly

E-forms are not intimidating, even for older company staff. If the forms are meant for clients or customers of the business to fill out, they can be completed at any convenient time. E-forms can even provide guidance for the proper content to be placed in every field on the E-form. Electronic forms can be easily duplicated simply by using the standard copy and paste operation that every computer user is familiar with. E-forms can also automatically pre-fill some user related fields, as soon as the identity of the user is authenticated.

E-Forms Save Time and Money Spent on Company Document Processing

Due to the reduction of e-form data entry errors, thanks to automatic form field validation control, the average processing time for any form is reduced by at least forty percent. This increases the efficiency of employee staff working with e-forms. In addition, e-forms can reduce or even eliminate printing costs, on items such as paper, ink and toner, as well as the costs of equipment and space for traditional filing systems. Further savings are found because integration of electronic forms with existing company database systems is as easy as choosing the format in which the e-form is saved.

Benefits of Increased Data Security and Client Satisfaction

Data entered into an e-form is immediately saved, in a coded format. If data entry is done from outside the company, receipt is accomplished by using secure Internet servers for collection of secure e-form data directly into the company database. This manner of data receipt is at a higher level of security than hand, or regular mail, delivery. Client and customer satisfaction is also increased, because their personal data can be entered and submitted, without the need for interaction with anyone else. This is important in this century, as identity theft becomes an ever increasing problem for businesses and individuals to overcome.

E-forms are bringing the modern office of the 21st century closer to the promise of a paper free operation, especially when e-forms are combined with networked, multifunction data management equipment and systems. E-forms help office operations reduce their impact on the environment. They also help reduce the carbon footprint of administrative operations. They are beneficial, cost saving and make good sense.

The preceding article was provided by Alex L., blogger/writer for Avoka Technologies.

5 Ways Companies Can Reduce Their Debt

When running a business, one of the issues that often gets in the way of success is excessive debt. If your business debt is growing at a rate that you are not comfortable with, it is generally in your best interest to address the problem now. How exactly can businesses reduce their debt? Here are five ways to help get your business back on the right track.

1. Collect Unpaid Invoices

One of the best ways that you can more easily deal with your debt is to collect unpaid invoices. Some businesses have large numbers of customers that have not paid their bills, and it puts a hamper on operations. Put an emphasis on being able to get as much money as possible from your customers on the front end of a deal. Then if you have any left-over that hasn’t been collected, consider using accounts receivable financing. This allows you to get an advance based on the value of the invoice. This has the potential to change the way you run your business and cut down on debt.

2. Liquidate Inventory

One of the biggest problems that many businesses have is a buildup of extra inventory. They pay money to buy inventory and then they just have to sit on it for a long time. This can lead to unnecessary levels of debt. In this situation, it makes sense to liquidate the inventory and use the proceeds to pay off your debt. It’s important to get a solid grasp of how much inventory you need on a regular basis.

3. Evaluate Tax Strategy

In some cases, businesses are paying too much money to the government in the form of taxes. They are not taking full advantage of all the tax breaks and credits that they are eligible for. Have a CPA look over your taxes and determine if you’re getting all of the tax breaks that you should be getting. Sometimes, just by making a few different business decisions throughout the year, you can significantly lower your tax bill. The savings that you realize can then be used to pay down your debt.

4. Cut Overhead

Many times, businesses spend way too much money on overhead. By cutting out some of these unnecessary expenses, you may be able to significantly reduce the size of your debt. For example, you might consider moving to a location with cheaper rent or utilities. You could eliminate unnecessary positions within the company or look for a cheaper supplier for materials.

5. Negotiate With Suppliers

You may also be able to negotiate terms with your suppliers in order to cut back on the amount of debt that you have to incur. For example, if you could extend your payment terms to 90 days, you might not have to use your line of credit to buy supplies or inventory.

When you take the time to implement these changes, you may be able to significantly reduce the amount of debt that you have to incur.

R. Swingle is an article writer for Business Finance Corporation; a privately held business finance company serving the southwestern United States.

3 Ways To Receive Funding For Your Business

Entrepreneurs and even the average Joe would rather receive funding and back up investors for their business than put their entire life’s savings at risk. In fact, it is better to pull a loan you can pay off or even get an investor who believes in the idea, than handle it all yourself and stay up all night figuring out how you’re going to make balance both your business’s checkbook and your personal checkbook.

For some businesses, funding is all they need to really great started and let their business plans come to life. No matter what the economy may be, receiving funding is a great way to kick start. Consider some of these three ways.

Ask the Bank

Although as any independent investor, the bank wants to know your business plan. Make sure you have one prepared and if you have a business mentor, have them take a look at it. If they aren’t that thrilled about it, they want to see who the individual behind the idea and business is.

Do you have a good credit score? Are you reliable? The question you should also take into consideration is how much money are you asking for and does it seem realistic compared to your business plan? Think like the bank, as they don’t want to waste money.

Crowd funding

This has become one of the most popular ways businesses have received the financial backup they need. In fact, many average individuals that don’t even consider themselves entrepreneurs have received funding just for their idea. After the thousands and thousands of dollars in funding they have received from people all over the world, their ideas have turned into valuable and running businesses.

Websites such as KickStarter and GoFundMe have changed the way fundraisers and business ideas have operated and excelled. It is also essential to maintain a high online presence. Publish your profile on websites such as Enthuse and LinkedIn to gain more popularity and reach a broader audience. This will allow your business or idea to raise more money.

Bootstrapping

One of the biggest mistakes businesses do is have their bank accounts empty when the end of the year comes along. Unless your business is a non-profit organization, this should never happen.

Your business should always have a savings account and look to save every penny where it can.

At the end of every month, take a look at your business’s costs and think very realistically, where can you cut? Do you really need a subscription to something your business never uses? Did you really need to purchase 20 whiteboards, or couldn’t you work with 10?

As your business saves every dollar, the remaining money should be invested back into the business and its ideas or expansion.

Robert is a small business owner and investor. He owns and operates a business due to his love for food and giving people an enjoyable dinner. As an investor he keeps up with the latest news and companies by his online profiles on websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Enthuse.