Get PAID Faster Than Ever Before

Get PAID Faster Than Ever Before

Getting PAID is a challenge many business owners have – at all stages. As your business grows and expands, your needs will change, for many reasons. In this blog, we wanted to offer our tips for getting paid faster and reducing the need to chase your clients for unpaid invoices. Because I know y’all would love to spend less time chasing payment and just getting paid upfront, amirite?! 

One way to get paid faster is to look at the methods you accept for payment: services like Stripe, Square, Afterpay. Are you offering the options that your clients and customers need? Or is there a more popular method that you may need to look into, to get your customers to hit that ‘Pay Now’ button faster?  

Another hack that we use is to put the payment options on your quote – don’t put them only on your invoice. If you list all the payment options on your quote, people have an option to pay you earlier – whereas they may never have thought of that otherwise.  

Another way you can save time and get paid faster, is by setting up reminders to follow up from invoices. The invoicing software you use will often have this feature so that you don’t have to spend time doing it manually. Xero is great for doing just this – you can set terms of i.e. 7 days, and a reminder will be sent out after that time period. You can also add in specific terms such as “Interest will be charged after X days”, or “Late payment fees apply after x days”, to encourage clients to pay faster. If you haven’t covered your butt and ensured that this is your terms and conditions – at the end of the day all is this is, is a scare tactic without any follow up.  

While cash isn’t a common method of getting paid in many businesses, we had to mention it here – waiting for a meeting, or for cash to be paid can delay payment even longer. With the range of options for electronic funds transfers nowadays – we believe online payments are just a much more convenient option.  

We’ve also seen business owners who only invoice once the work is done – and this doesn’t have to be the case. Depending on the type of work, you can choose to invoice upfront, and request payment be made before you commence work. Many other businesses work off a 50% upfront and 50% on completion framework. Others offer payment plans to spread the cost out, and also reduce risk for both parties. All of these options increase your chances of getting paid faster. 

We’d love to hear your experiences and tips with these! Have you found any other methods for getting paid faster in your business? 

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Actionable Tips for Better Record Keeping in Your Business

Actionable Tips for Better Record Keeping in Your Business

Repeat after me: “a shoebox alone is not a solution”. Ok, look. I know lots of business owners do this – and it’s not the end of the world if that’s where all your receipts are stored right now. I’ve got a few tips up my sleeve to help you keep on top of them – and make tax time more about reviewing info, than spending hours going through your shoebox receipts. 

First up – have a think about the systems you currently have in your business. What’s working? What’s not working? If you don’t have a system for your records already, it’s time to create one! Trust me, it’ll make your life a whole lot easier and feel much more organised – which is a great feeling! Perhaps you already have a system in place, but is it effective and saving you time? Sometimes systems can end up creating more work – which completely defeats the purpose! Your goal should always be to streamline and get it done faster and easier. If it’s a hassle, you’ll procrastinate on doing it too – meaning a build up of work (read: a stack of accounting to do, come tax time 😉).   

One challenge we often see with clients is when business owners have a CRM, and an accounting system completely separate – and where these systems don’t speak to each other. In this scenario you’ll find that information is being duplicated and can get confusing – and instead of making life easier, you create extra work! So instead of just letting things go – take the time to evaluate what systems you have and if they are truly working in your business so that you don’t have extra to do later on. 

Another big thing to pay attention to is whether your CRM is setup for GST. Some that were created by international organisations may not account for GST, and this can also cause big issues down the track if your invoicing is not accurate. Even if you aren’t at the stage of charging GST just yet, it’s handy to know that your CRM can handle it so that you don’t need to change systems when you do get to this stage.  

Also a super important tip for record keeping in your business is keeping them for five years. These don’t have to be paper, they could be electronic. But, as a business owner you need to make sure you are keeping everything. That means, if you commit to taking photos of your receipts and load them into a system like Xero – it’s best if you do ALL of your receipts that way, rather than half and half.  

Our last tips for record keeping is our personal preference – use an app where you can take photos of your receipts rather than keeping paper copies. This way you can ensure that it’s always saved, even if you lose the paper copies – or if the ink fades! There are some great apps out there like Receipt Bank. If you do want to keep the paper copies as well – make sure they are stored in one place – like a shoebox or zip lock bag. Our final tip is to separate your records by financial year – and we mean when the invoice was PAID, not when it was raised.  

Phew! Implementing these steps will save you so much time and avoid headaches in the long run. Which will you start by doing next?