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Sole trader invoice for Support

today just know provide sauce doing some NDI stuff and today's video is a fun one because this is about how do we get paid so what we're doing basically techie guys through how we make sure that our business that works as a not-for-profit in the end is framework how does that set itself up to be viable long term under the NDIS and we've sort of stepping through the process is to look at give you a bit of an idea in terms of the areas you should look at and the challenges you might face so what we've covered to date we've gone through client journey we've talked a little bit about data where that comes from and the importance of collecting that data what we want to go through now is well how how do we invoice the client and how do we make sure that we get paid so it sounds really straightforward we want to send an invoice out to everyone who comes to us for a service now we've spoken to previously about the challenges that these changes present being both technical and cultural again invoicing clients is a big cultural aspect to this because we've never done it before this is something that we're not used to the only invoice we would send out is to potentially the government to get the grant money so now we need to send a lot of invoices out to a lot of different people to get paid can be quite confronting and again we talked about in the data section the data video operations will tend to be the first cultural issue you need to deal with because their first reaction will be well this is a finance problem because we don't invoice we deliver the service invoicing that's an accounting thing when we're not accounting you're canning sit in the back office that's that's what they do now again you can't can't deal with this problem in isolation that's it's a joint it's a joint process that needs to be worked on together between operations and finance and in doing this again quite often in organizations you've already got these systems that we've spoken before before we got operational systems that already exist some of these systems are already able to do invoicing so quite often the first point of call is to look at operations and we'll wall is they're actually more efficient if operations are doing invoicing now this sounds I know this sounds sort of weird from a technical point of view so well invoicing is an accounting function you are it's dollars and cents it's sending money out is why would operations be doing this well if you look at if you pull out of not-for-profit for a section second and look at normal business most normal businesses operations do the invoicing you just don't see it it's just it's seamless so you go and buy a copy the person at the register is the one giving you the invoice they're the one sending the invoice Attucks sure you might cut you a problem pea sure right but you might not you might have it on the count it's all done by the front-of-house another example if you get a trainee coming out to your house and doing some work well if it quite often give you an invoice right there and then and take payment right there and then even though admin are back in and offer somewhere so operations doing invoicing this isn't that unusual so it's something you shouldn't dismiss out of hand when you're looking at changing your process again though it's the cultural aspect is to be changed the system might be already there might be a flick of a switch effectively to start invoicing but operations aren't used to doing it and it's not what they were missed on why they started working in the position they're working so there's a there's a big cultural aspect of us and so this is the sensitivity to this and this is why this work is actually quite challenging to implement because you're not it's not just about building the system it's not just about implementing processes it's actually the people aspect is the biggest aspect of all this it's actually bringing them along on the journey okay so your system that you're going to use for invoicing is your first question what is that and where is it now is it operational hopefully from my perspective because again you're close to the data it'll help make sure it's more accurate and can get done more frequently and there's less lag in terms of getting that done the other aspect operationally is if you're invoicing out of the operational system you can quite potentially take payment in the operational system so rather than having a lag of weeks or months to getting paid for the services you deliver if you can get clients to pay right then and there that'll help with the cash flow side of things it also help in terms of the administrative side of things because it'll all be stored in that operational system the last point of having an operational system is it gives those who are interacting with the clients on a daily or weekly basis an opportunity to see their payment history if they have a problem or question with an invoice not necessarily that operations are the ideal person to be dealing with that but they can deal with it if the information is there in the system potentially they have answered the question quite quickly or make an adjustment if it's required quite quickly so that the client gets their issues dealt with quickly and it's about then the client being given a great service by your organization one of the concerns you might have is like well if the operational system is doing all invoicing how does that get into our canning systems and how it's financed see it there's two aspects to that one's the technical ones are cultural the technical one in terms of okay if there's invoice data in one system we need to get that to an our accounting system honestly that isn't a big step it's a very technical one and really from an accounting perspective that's just managing data the dad is right in the operational system to be able to extract that data and put that into an accounting system especially with the systems we've got now in the inter integration capabilities shouldn't be a hard step shouldn't be a big step even even if the large volume shouldn't be a step what would be the cultural aspect of it which is interesting is that finance to be able to do that need to actually be a little bit involved in the operational system so they need to be able to touch the operational system and interact with it this also is from a payment side is that where payments are received from the finance side finance might actually be responsible for entering that into the operational system to show that invoices have been paid so again there's a cultural aspect from finance who are used to just well we just deal with our accounting system we don't need to know anything operationally well now they saw that they starting to do that so they're needing to interact with operations this also then feeds into well if you're not taking payment straight away and you need to get payment after the fact either through an NDIS provider or the government itself finance will quite often be needing to do that so they'll need to appreciate the information that's coming out of the operational system and go through a process of collecting the debts so again not necessarily something not-for-profits have had to do before is manage a dead ledger or collect debts now again separating it from a not-for-profit just normal business any business a good debt collecting or debtor process is the one make sure it's updated frequently so again this is your frequency of data so if you can get that updated daily from what's been delivered to the clients that's important both from invoices and also what's been paid so that you have a clear picture on daily basis of what's outstanding the second one is to proactively manage those that are becoming delinquent so where it depends on what time frame you do so for business if your your standard payment terms which again you'd have to think about what your standard payment terms for clients but if you stay standing payment terms of 14 days if someone hasn't paid you in 21 days giving them a phone call following them up having a proactive process to see if there's a problem because the sooner you get on top of your as soon as you have that conversation with the client the sooner you're likely to get paid it might be that they don't have that's a potential it might be they're forgotten bad actually it's probably more common than the fact that they don't have the money it might be that they're not happy with some details on the invoice or they've got a question and they were just wanting to answer the question before they make the payment well then that allows you to start that process whether you can answer it there or then or you can at least put the wheels of motion to get that answered so it's very important to have that debtors process happening so that you stay on top of your debt because the worst thing that could happen is that data start getting to one month two months three months and they haven't paid and you're giving them a call then they probably don't remember the service and frankly if I have someone who calls me asking for payment three or four months after I've had the service I find that a little annoying because it's like well I thought I had paid for this already or I mean I don't intentionally not pay it's that okay I've forgotten about it now you're reminding me well I haven't planned for that it can be a much bigger issue that far out so being proactive and being staying on top of it is important the other thing again another cultural aspect here is well what if people can't pay what if you do have that problem with debtors now where people have had the service they've been invoiced and now the same they can't pay what do you do because you've never had to deal with this before do you stop providing service when do you stop providing service so this is because there's a cultural aspect this is something you actually want to decide both strategically and operationally because it has a number of flow-on effects so one if you're going to stop providing service because someone hasn't paid the people who will have to do that most likely operations so you want to be able to feed the information to operations to let them know or give them the flag to when someone hasn't been paying and we're now going to stop service so they know not to stop service now let's not underestimate how massive a cultural change that is for the organization because operations people are there they're there because I want to do good this is this is what they do to have a client who obviously still has a need come in and be a have to have to say to them we can't provide you service because you haven't paid for your previous services that that is a whole nother world and how you do that how you message it I mean you're still dealing with clients that have probably under a great deal of stress you know it's not just about saying no it's about saying no but giving options about still providing them support in ways that you can but not overextending your business and providing services that you're not going to get paid for that will ultimately cause your business to fail so this is something that as an organization there needs to be some very deep thinking about about how you structure that and support you put around it but then also about how do you communicate to the operations staff to finite staff who are having to deal with the clients who are under the stress and how you as much as it seems odd how you make the client journey for them still as pleasant as possible so how do you help them if it's you know if it's that they're struggling with how to manage their finances under NDIS other avenues you can to assist or webpages you can get them to other information you can provide them that doesn't compromise your service doesn't compromise your organization but at least allows them to become educated so they can continue receiving the service which they need so that whole deli's process is something new and quite daunting for the organization so that's enforcing a lot of challenges in getting paid fundamentally something that needs to happen for you to continue but a lot of things unique about and once again with all this it's both cultural and technical so if you need an organization that has worked in these areas before it's something that rights also myself have done working with organizations in this space to overcome that the cultural challenges as well as the technical if you like more information definitely chuck your details below and I can happily provide more information I'll get back to you or if you'd like to have a one-on-one otherwise subscribe stay tuned next week we sort of wrap it off and bring it all together until next week it's just an alkyl rights AUSA talk to you later [Music] you