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Invoicing. I sell a product that customers use on many of their own projects, and each project of theirs means one invoice for me. I can solve some of this wi
by bshimmin 10y ago
Invoicing. I sell a product that customers use on many of their own projects, and each project of theirs means one invoice for me. I can solve some of this with automation, and I will get around to doing this, but it will remain hard to keep on top of even then because the nature of the thing I'm selling relies on the customer to validate that the tally is correct before I send the invoice.
(I also have the opposite problem when the customers actually pay, because they often batch many invoices together into one payment, which makes reconciliation surprisingly difficult. I wrote a little script in Python to make that easier - sort of along the lines of "Given this total, which of these invoices could potentially satisfy it?" - but it's still frustrating.)
If the business continues to grow, I anticipate hiring someone to take care of this aspect for me in its entirety, because it's demonstrably a poor usage of my time, and I derive zero pleasure from it.
- Cyph0n 10y agoWhy not hire a remote "secretary" to take care of this for you?
- bshimmin 10y agoYes, I've sort of half-heartedly considered this, without really exploring the idea very fully. Can you - or anyone else - recommend such a service? All they would really need to do is reach out to customers to check tallies on their projects and to see if they're finished, and then to generate invoices for said projects if they are. I guess this really isn't a difficult task!
- curiousphil 10y agoMy company recently signed up with Intelligent Office to handle our phones. It's been over a month now and we are really pleased with their service. They are pretty flexible on what they will/can handle. I believe they are franchised and we are using the Boise, ID franchise which is the next town over from us. It's always the same three girls that answer the phones for us and they do a great job of sounding like they are right in our office. They even joined one of our Slack channels so they can check in on who is available and such for incoming calls. When I went to meet them before signing up they told me they also handle customer returns for a high end mobile phone case company out of California, so I have no doubt you could train them on your invoicing process. Edit: Adding URL! https://www.intelligentoffice.com https://www.intelligentoffice.com
- bshimmin 10y agoThanks for the suggestion, I'll check them out (and thanks for the other responses too)!
- audeyisaacs 10y ago>(I also have the opposite problem when the customers actually pay, because they often batch many invoices together into one payment, which makes reconciliation surprisingly difficult. I wrote a little script in Python to make that easier - sort of along the lines of "Given this total, which of these invoices could potentially satisfy it?" - but it's still frustrating.) Why not have accounts with client codes? Instruct clients to put their client codes in the narration(they won't always, but most will put something identifying themselves). Instead of reconciling individual invoices, just sum the invoices of a particular client. If there's still an amount owing, it's for the most recent invoice(s).
- rmetzler 10y agoWould it be possible to invoice what you think should be correct? If the customer recognizes a difference you add a credit item to the next invoice.