One of the most daunting and tricky tasks that business owners have to regularly deal with is recovering outstanding payments. Chasing late invoices is not only a time-consuming affair, but it can also land businesses in financial hardships. Also, most people find it awkward to follow up on overdue invoices with their clients, as it may end up affecting their relationship.
Almost 40% of all the invoices in the USA are paid late, and more than 60% of late payments happen due to incorrect invoicing. Every year, late invoice payments cause a lot of trouble for small and medium businesses worldwide. Thus, if you want to maintain regular cash flow, it is essential to remind your clients about overdue payments as soon as you can.
However, manual reminders are tedious, require follow-ups, and often lack accuracy. This is the reason behind the creation of Invoice Reminder Software for businesses. By using such software, the process of asking, reminding, accounting, and payments can be automated, much to the benefit of companies.
Invoice or Payment Reminder Software is a great way to remind your clients about their overdue payments so that you can get paid on time.
High-performance invoice reminder software sends out detailed reminder emails to your clientele so that you can offload the burden of chasing late payments and focus on more important things.
How Do Invoice Reminders Work?
An Invoice Reminder application can send invoices for sales/delivery orders, contracts, and time or material. Once you turn on invoice reminders, the software starts checking all the sent invoices. Once it discovers an unpaid or overdue invoice, the software immediately sends out a reminder email to your client based on your settings.
The best payment reminder software not only allows you to turn your invoice notifications on and off for your clients as per your requirement but helps you keep tabs on the sent out reminders. What’s more, the software also lets you add payment details so that your clients can pay you easily.
Invoice Reminder Software can also be useful in:
- Reminding clients when their invoice is due
- Lets clients know how much is due/overdue and when the payment needs to be made
- Setting a payment reminder system to send out invoices automatically to your clients on specific dates and times
- Creating customized invoice reminders for each of your clients based on your rapport with them
- Creating and sending payment reminders directly from the software in just a few clicks
- Excluding invoices that you do not want to chase
- Adding late payment fees
Features of Invoice Reminder Software
High-performing invoice reminder software come with the following features:
1. Inbuilt Reminder Templates
Most invoice reminder systems come with inbuilt reminder templates to make your task simpler. The templates allow you to include all necessary details, such as your company’s name, logo, telephone number, address, client’s name, fees, service description, etc.
You can also customize the templates by removing or adding custom fields to make your emails more personal. You can also find several invoice reminder templates here.
2. Report Generation
An efficient invoice reminder system also comes with a robust reporting module. The software generates useful reports to help you track your ROI, ledger status, and payment history, etc. What’s more, it helps you evaluate your income based on different criteria, such as clients, country, period, and so on.
3. Third-Party Software Integration
The best invoice reminder tools can be integrated into your existing accounting system without much hassle. Such software can also procure data from your current systems and make them more efficient.
4. Efficient Invoice Tracking
Invoice reminders help you catch up on late bill payments, thus ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks. Payment reminder software comes with a dashboard to help you track which invoice payments have been cleared by clients and the ones that are still due.
Most such software also gives you alerts for payments made and automatically updates the information in your database. Thus, you can do away with your old habit of tracking your bank accounts time and again to make sure if your clients have made the payment or not.
6. Payment Gateways
A robust invoicing reminder tool supports multiple online payment gateways to simplify your payment procedure. This feature helps you accept payments from clients located anywhere in the world and add multiple payment accounts.
7. Cross-Platform Compatibility
The best invoicing reminder software also comes with cross-platform compatibility. It allows you to generate and send invoice reminders from your PC as well as different handheld devices, such as your smartphone, laptop, or tablet. This helps you create invoices anywhere and notify clients for payment.
8. Delivery Notifications
Invoicing reminders systems also notify you as soon as your client sees your email. This helps in knowing that your client has received a reminder request sent and assures you that the client knows when to transfer the payment.
Benefits of Using Invoice Reminders
Payment reminder software offers a lot of remarkable benefits, and therefore, is a must-have tool for modern businesses. Here are seven significant benefits that you can reap by using the software:
1. Timely Reminders
The most significant benefit of payment reminder software is that it regularly reminds your clients to pay their invoices on time. Consequently, it enhances your chances of getting paid.
2. Amicable Approach
Electronic invoice reminders are also a polite way of reminding your customers about overdue payments and late fees. With an automatic payment reminder, you can send friendly invoice reminders to your clients instead of calling or texting them incessantly.
3. Multi-Device Compatibility
Cloud-based payment reminder tools are mobile compatible and help you generate and send invoices on the go any time, from any corner of the globe. Some invoice reminders also have a mobile application using which you can create, view, and send invoices directly to your clients.
4. Time-Saving
Invoice reminder software helps you save a great deal of time to focus on other important aspects of your business. Moreover, with added reminder templates and email integration, you will also need much less time to create bills and send them to clients.
5. Automation of Payments
With a high-end payment reminder software, you can automate as well as pause payment reminders as per your convenience. For fixed monthly payments, you can automate reminders to be sent on a fixed date every month. You can also include or exclude recipients based on your requirements.
6. Easy Auditing
The software also captures and stores the audit trials of your payments so that you can easily comply with the government’s record-keeping requirements for tax purposes. You can also view payment history and know exactly how much money is outstanding at any given time.
7. Environment-Friendly
An electronic invoicing reminders system eliminates paperwork and helps your organization go green. Additionally, with payment reminder software, you can store and archive your invoices electronically, thus, reducing paperwork to a great extent.
How To Choose the Best Invoice Reminder Software?
There’s no dearth of payment reminder software in the market today. However, not all software is designed to cater to your organizational needs.
Therefore, before making the final purchase, you need to keep the following factors in mind to avoid costly buying mistakes:
1. Consider Market Reputation
Pick a reliable software vendor that has a good reputation in the industry. Additionally, pick a software that is ideal for your industry type.
2. Check Reviews
It is wise to do a bit of online research to identify the best invoice reminder application available in the market. At the same time, visit software review sites like www.softwaresuggest.com to compare features and read detailed product reviews.
3. Easy Installation
Make sure the invoicing reminder system you are planning to buy is easy to install and can be integrated with your current systems. This will significantly reduce the time for your employees to learn and adapt to the software.
4. Free Trial
Most invoice reminder software provides a free trial period of about two weeks or more. Choose an invoice reminder app that offers a free trial period so that you can test it on your premises. Utilize this time to try out different features and decide if the software is the right choice for your company. Find out if the invoicing software supports different payment gateway options and for multiple products and clients.
5. Language & Currency Support
Pick an invoice reminder that supports multiple languages and currencies so that you can accept payments from your overseas clients without the least hassle.
6. Customer Support & Assistance
Make sure that your software vendor is backed by an efficient customer support team so that you can resolve your queries related to the payment reminder software as and when the need arises. Support must be provided via calls, chat, and emails so that you can reach out to them in case of any inconvenience.
Additionally, verify if they can arrange for on-premise training to help your employees learn.
7. Pricing
Choose a feature-packed invoice reminder system that is affordable at the same time. However, some of this software can have additional features for which you might be charged extra. Make sure that you compare pricing and are not paying for the features that you rarely use.
Adherence to the above factors will help you pick the best payment reminder software for your company and help you maintain steady cash flow.
Wrapping it Up
Businesses that ignore the importance of automating their invoicing processes are likely to fall behind their competitors. Thus, a lot of small and medium-sized businesses across the globe are investing in this useful software to stay competitive in the market.
So gear up to streamline your billing processes by picking the best payment reminder system available in the market and let it make life easier for you.
After all, why do we work so hard?
To (among other things)get paid, right?!
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