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Invoice no format for Customer Support

hello good morning to everyone thank you for joining us today for our master class this is a 38th master class and very interesting topic for today make it easy for your customers to pay for you and we have with us john select our strategic ar advisor and subject matter expert at imagine corporation along with us john over to you to take us through the session for today thank you all right thank you very much akshay we have a a good program today i know i say that every week but this is a little different you know much of what we've talked about in the prior master classes and a lot of what you see written about and hear about is the collection effort improving the collection effort how to do more of it with limited staff how to make it more effective today we're looking at maybe the other side of the coin so to speak that'll eliminate the need for collection effort and we call that facilitating on time customer payments so we'll have an introduction talk about the topic and its importance and we'll get into four ways to influence customers and make it easy for them to pay you on time without your having to contact them follow up chase them perform collection activity and there's really four dimensions to this is order fulfillment invoicing accommodating their payment method of choice and providing self-serve capabilities to enable them to pay your invoices whenever they want to online while you're asleep recap the benefits sum up with a conclusion then answer any questions you might have so you know let's uh start off you'll see the phrase here in boldface on time customer initiated payments so i think we all understand what non-time means right ing to payment terms but customer initiated meaning the customer makes the payment uh voluntarily unilaterally with no follow-up from you the money comes in on the due date um requires no collection follow-up well when you think about it that's really the best case scenario when you sell on credit terms kind of put it on autopilot fulfill the order send the invoice wait until the payment terms uh expire and boom your money's there great this obviously optimizes cash flow from receivables but also reduces the cost to management so you don't have to make collection calls they're also a reliable indicator of customer satisfaction so maximizing them is an objective and i would suggest to uh all of you in the audience take try to estimate how much of your sales and your receivables come in with no effort in other words by a customer initiated payment and also how much of that comes in on time or closed on time you know a few days that'll give you a good indication of how well you're fulfilling orders the level of customer satisfaction and also how well you've trained your customers that hey our payment terms are our payment terms when we say 30 days we expect the money in 30 days and one way to do that is say take for example take all your billings from august of 2021. where are they today how much is still open how much was paid how much was credited or written off and how much was paid on time and then kind of scan through the on-time payments and you can just make the assumption that there was no collection follow-up because there was no need to and just try to get a sense for that percentage what percent were paid on time presumably with no collection follow-up for you this will be nice to know what percent are still open and what percent were credited or written off kind of a dilution factor you know doing that little one-month study i think can tell you a lot but do it primarily as a measure of customer satisfaction and then you might want to do it for another month or two and see if the numbers are consistent but remember that's the best case scenario getting paid on time with no [Music] no work no activation no actually no action on your all right so what facilitates on time customer initiated payments now you'll see this phrase pop up i'll use it a lot pops up on every page on time customer initiated well you start off the first thing and perhaps the biggest influence is perfect order fulfillment if you fulfill your customer's order perfectly including invoicing it accurately you eliminate legitimate reasons to delay back a dispute um from incorrect fulfillment of the order incorrect invoicing i mean that gives the customer a legitimate business reason for not paying on time paying short maybe paying late um not paying until somebody contacts them and they get their questions answered file their grievance uh request a corrected invoice that sort of thing so perfect order fulfillment sets the stage for an on-time payment and how do we define perfect order well typically it's delivery of the right product in the right quantity undamaged if it's a physical product delivered on time to the right location in the requested mode in other words packaged properly labeled the way the customer requests uh even there's time of day for delivery you know this is very much if you supply big retailers they're very specific about packaging label has to be in the upper right hand corner of the box not the lower left and um you know delivered between 10 am and 3 pm so it gets pretty stringent um but you know that's the requirements that they impose and if you meet those requirements perfectly that's a perfect order and by rights it should be paid on time in full without any follow-up from you now this is a i think a pretty simple concept pretty easy to understand pretty easy to talk about um difficult to execute you know to get 98 99 perfect order this is not easy but over time with all the quality techniques available it is possible or at least get as close as you can to the degree you have perfect orders you'll also raise the on-time customer initiated payments all right what else impacts this well invoice now we already addressed accurate invoices in the perfect order invoice and clearly that's a big factor you know the association for productivity and quality did a study recently that revealed that companies in the top quartile of invoicing accuracy are paid on average 19 days 19 days earlier than those in the bottom court talk and remember we're only talking about quartiles here so if you're in the upper quartile not to be derogatory or dismiss that but it's not the top five percent up 10 so even just being in the top quartile and having the accuracy that that implies makes a significant impact on getting paid off so an accurate invoice is kind of a prerequisite right getting paid on time but there's also other dimensions or qualities about the invoice that effect when it gets paid remember you're asking your customer pace on time well when you ask somebody to do something then it makes sense to make it as easy for them as possible makes sense here so in addition to having delivering an accurate invoice there's some other dimensions here like deliver it in their requested delivery mode if they want an electronic invoice or they want it posted to their vendor portal and you send them a paper hard copy invoice chances are it's not going to get paid on them you're making a difficult form you're an exception what else well all the information they request certainly the po number no a description of the product service can help too proper sales tax some customers will i ask you to put an internal accounting code on it other requests you know you may think oh geez why they need this information well don't spend any time picking up just do it just comply um you know quick story about this description of the product service had a client that made patient monitors were used in hospitals you know you're in the hospital they hook you up patient monitor pulse blood pressure temperature all that stuff well this company which was founded by engineers which may have something to do with it um on their invoicing for patient monitor nowhere did it say patient monitor it said model 859 xl3 248 megahertz 220 volts so when when the hospital's payables department got this invoice so what do we buy from this vendor we buy patient monitors what do they invoice us for don't have a clue put it aside it's an exception got to check for purchasing or somebody so those invoices didn't get paid on time because they raised a question so when we talk about all requested information it goes a little deeper than you might and then finally in the format they request you know if they want the pl number in the upper left put in the upper left um you say oh geez this leads to a lot of customization well yes it does but you know most invoicing uh software has the ability to create and use a template for an individual customer so it's a one-time task to set up to tell and you know what you're probably going to end up having to submit an invoice in that form anyway so if you don't do it the first time uh you called customer how come you haven't paid our invoice well it doesn't meet our requirement so then you create that invoice anyway and you get paid at day 60 instead of day third so invoicing everyone understands the importance of accurate invoicing but you know accuracy has a number of dimensions which we've addressed here so remember the the key theme here make it easy easier for your customer to pay you and your chances of getting paid on time with no collection follow-up increase all right this next topic is probably the the largest topic here because of all the change in the payment modes available to companies how they're going to pay their vendors so remember the title of this webinar and the theme here make it easy for your customers to pay you well one big factor is enabling them to pay in the payment mode that they prefer not that you prefer that they prefer that's a nice blanket statement however the payment method they choose can result in low-cost processing of their payments or significant cost to process their payments you know the best example here is if your customers pay via ach that has the lowest cost for your bank lock box to process if they pay with a credit debit or p card you know the credit card companies charge a fee and it can be one to two percent well one to two percent of a big number becomes a significant number significant cost so while the customer may prefer to pay that way you'll be able to cost them but paper checks also are fairly expensive to process through a bank lock box system so remember we said in the second bullet point bullet point it's no harm in influencing customers to pay so it's a little bit of a balancing act here one you want to accommodate the customer's preference for payment make it easy to pay you two you want to steer them in the right direction so processing their payments is cheaper rather than costlier fortunately there's a lot of new payment modes out there and and this is what's given rise to this accommodate your customers payment preference because there's many many new ways electronic ways secure ways to pay and um companies are adopting them they don't want to pay with a paper check they want to pay through some sort of electronic needs and there's a lot of new payment modes come up you know and you're probably familiar with some of the names venmo square paypal or perhaps better known on the consumer front but there's a host of them and they go by a lot of different names real-time payments digital real-time payments frictionless digital payments but generally they're much less costly than the other payment loans excluding ach and remember other good factors here the digital rdp are made directly between the buyer and the seller through uh direct secure internet connection kind of like trading with a customer on edi when an edi customer sent an order or remit advice to radio and that's direct between the two companies secure and um pretty cheap pretty fast pretty cheap so and they're much more convenient for the customer to make that payment they enable payments by a wide range of mobile devices electronic means through this secure account to account connection so if you can accept a large number of these real-time payments that your customers prefer you're making it easier for your customers to pay you and accommodating their requests which enhances your image as a supplier one more few more comments on accommodating payments you know if a customer prefers to pay by a digital method and you can accept that you're enhancing the customer experience which you joined us for our strategic ar management webinar a few months ago enhancing the customer experience is um one of the top priorities and bear in mind if you're selling to small and medium businesses you know a lot of those are headed by a person or a small group of people who kind of do a lot of different things sell fulfill orders you know run run the office run the business and they usually don't pay vendor invoices during regular business hours so the digital payments enable them to do it nights weekends off hours if you will it makes it easier for them make it easy for them there's some evidence building that you get paid earlier sometimes even earlier than the payment terms you know they pay it when they get around to it if it's day 25 of that 30 day terms they just let the payment fly unless they're really cash constraint so it's important to small medium-sized businesses larger businesses are gravitating towards the new payment technology because of calls so i mentioned this earlier influence the payment mode your customers use because some are cheap for you others are expensive and there's basically two ways you can do that access as a service fee for payments made in the higher cost modes you see this a lot in the consumer market if you go to a retail establishment and you pay with a credit card sometimes it will be a two or three percent surcharge which makes the retailer whole from two to three percent they're going to lose from the credit card or rather than using vinegar use honey and offer a discount for payments made in the lower cost modes or some combination of the two you need to figure out what will work with your customer base i say influence you know you want to ban certain payments we will not accept credit card payment that's a that's a choice you need to understand what the impact on your customers will be and your your payments but some engineering here uh influencing customers works to advantage for for both parties all right so accommodate the payment side what's the last major function of facilitating customer initiated on time payments well provide self-serve capabilities give them the ability to pay without talking to anybody going to a portal making a payment seeing what invoices they owe getting a statement of account um and it's 24 7 365 so it can be much quicker for your customer to pay on a customer portal you can do it around the clock and see the invoices download them see the statement and the better customer portal have ai powered digital assistance which can guide customers through the payment process step by step by step so that'll bring in [Music] these self-serve capabilities again customer service customer set enhance the customer experience but also enable customers to pay unilaterally uh around the clock start doing all these things together you'll see that your on-time payments go up and the number of the level collection activity goes down and in many cases even the level of incoming calls to customer service go down as well so you're making it easy for your customers to pay you on time and being able to do it independent of any contact with you so what's the benefits well we've been talking about them through the webinar so far clearly increase cash flow and reduce pass-time you're going to increase the number of on-time payments enhanced customer experience we talked about that quite a bit and increased productivity and collections because it's fewer accounts can focus more on the high credit risk accounts and hopefully reduce or avert a bad debt loss so what are the results well more cash happy customers if you look at the value chain the bottom you know we start with the improved customers experience uh reducing credit risk if you reduce your ar all things being equal you're reducing your credit risk get a good greater cash flow and ultimately increased revenue and increased profitability so what do we take from this again instead of focusing on ramping up collection activity collection effectiveness we've looked at the other side of the coin how do we make it easier for the customers to pay on time quite honestly without bothering us without calling us without making us call them you know just pay the bill on time you know how do we do that um because that is the best case scenario and it's make it easy for your customers to pay you on time and we went through four factors that influenced that and we spend a fair amount of time on these digital real-time payments because they're they're growing fast and they're rapidly becoming a payment mode of choice questions [Music] thank you john our first question is do customers prefer to remit via digital payments versus check or other means well more and more companies are preferring electronic payments as a category and the real-time payments are becoming very very popular and they're actually better for both parties so that's what we're seeing out there and i think in today's day and age if you do not accept many of these digital payments you're probably not going to be rated as a top flight supplier you're making your customers go through an extra step and pay in a way they don't want to so there's a lot of negatives to that yeah about that and are there certain transactions where digital payments are especially valuable well i always look at the uh situation where you have a customer that's a poor credit risk and you don't want to sell to them on open credit so either get an advance payment which most customers will resist or you get payment upon delivery well these digital payments make that much easier you deliver the goods customer makes a digital payment you can confirm the payment right there know that you've been paid and complete the transaction and move on so that's one case where the digital payments are very beneficial right on and another aspect is that on the customizations for the invoices right i mean there are like a lot of formats multiple different formats with different customers do you think is it worth the effort it is it is you know customization impacts productivity right you want kind of everything standardized automated just a flow when you have to customize an invoice for a customer it interrupts that mass production mass automation flow but you know at the end of the day you're probably going to have to do it anyway because if the customer doesn't get the invoice in the format and with the information they want they're not going to pay it somebody's going to call them how come you haven't paid us you know nicer language than that how come you haven't paid us oh well you didn't put our bid number on the invoice and then put our part cost center number on the invoice okay and then you give them that no information on the phone or via email somebody hand writes it on your invoice and then they pay it late so or they ask for a corrected invoice oh you got to put our custom cost center number on that invoice then we can pay so you manually prepare an invoice and to again [Music] pass the due date and so you end up customizing the invoice anyway and getting paid a day 50 or 60 or 70 instead of day 30 32 35 and with most invoicing software you can customize invoices per customer so you don't want you set up the template and then you're kind of on autopilot so yes it's extra work but it's well worth it absolutely john i think thank you very much for the answers and all i and we are almost at the top of the hour all right yeah and uh we are looking forward to all of the patch pens again for our next master class for thursday 31st of march the topic is planning guidelines for faster b2b payments thank you very much for joining us today thanks everyone and again if you have any questions please don't hesitate to send them to us we're happy to answer them and entertain your questions and concerns thank you thank you john