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Teaching invoice template for Management

[Music] focus on keeping apprised that you do have especially the profitable one and it's gonna transform the way we do this are you ready that's where the magic that's a leash scooter and hopefully that's not going to create a problem okay hey Ben good to see you thank you for joining good to see you it's not going to be a huge crowd and that's okay be prepared with questions at the end of this presentation this would be about a 40 minute presentation we're going to zoom through a bunch of stuff simple basic business hygiene that isn't happening on the ground and if we change just a few things about the way we do this is it will completely transform your cash position without killing yourself which is the whole point so at any rate we're going to give it about another two more minutes we are on the clock let me just see where we are yeah we're at 11:58 we said we will start at noon which is my promise to you we will do that so think about your questions as you're listening to this presentation the only people who will have access to this presentation after it is over are the people who are on the live call nobody else has access to this we are not throwing it out there for the entire internet this is for people who are quite serious about improving their cash flow their profitability and ultimately their net worth so in a minute I'm going to take you through some statistics that are going to bend your mind and we are in the business of doubling small business survival rates that is my mission and I can't wait to take you through this presentation because I have saved thousands of businesses with what I'm going to show you today okay so I don't know mute yourself would you meet yourself and then that way when you do need to ask a question at the end of this presentation you can unmute yourself and be happy to answer your question about your question okay so it's really just for just as a courtesy if you wouldn't mind meeting yourself I'm dawn Fotopoulos and we are getting started right now so here we go professors on the top of here in New York City I want to take you through about 40 minutes of strategy with how you can double your cash flow with literally no effort I know that sounds too good to be true but I have done this in the real world with hundreds of small businesses and I can tell you that the responses are unbelievable and just for changing the way you invoice so I'm going to talk to you about invoicing strategy and just as a brief reminder let's remember what cash really is okay repeat after me blood is to your body as cashes to your business without blood you die without cash your business guys please stop sitting on all your cash it is unbelievable to me what I see in the marketplace okay and I talk to your accounting professionals and it's really interesting they sit like mind-blowing I said to them you know your people have a problem they're not invoicing on a timely basis they're not getting paid for the work that they're doing and a lot of accounting professionals said to me they don't have a problem with invoicing and I'm telling you most small business owners do have a problem with invoicing which is why we're talking about the subject today because the invoice is the tip of the spear the invoice initiates the cash cycle if you don't get invoicing right the cash isn't going to be there and if you're hot trouble paying your bills there's a pretty good likelihood that the reason that you are is because you're not managing your invoicing strategy correctly so let's remember that the sale isn't made until you get paid okay the sale isn't made until you get paid when I was writing the tenth chapter of accounting for the number of phobic I was talking to norm Brosky and basically chapter 10 is an entire transcript of just norm talking about why it's important to get paid on a sale because he's a Salesman by training and he said you know small business owners do not understand that the sale isn't complete until the client pays you and in a second you're going to understand why that is such a radioactive comment you said but if you want to know the difference between an expensive hobby and a viable business is predictable cash flow and what does that mean that means having enough cash to support the operations of the business as well as your personal life the business has to do double duty it's not just there to break even it's got to support you and your family as well so everybody I want you to lift up your right foot go ahead do it as soon as a discipline lift up your right foot okay you have a million dollars sitting underneath your right foot and you don't even know that it's there and I'm going to show you how to access it okay so I am professor zahn Fotopoulos I am the award-winning author of accounting for the number phobic a Survival Guide for small business owners and it is the only book on accounting that will make you laugh it is illustrated by a Disney artist and it is designed to be breakthrough it is designed for people just like you and me because I was number phobic at one point and that's most of the world right we're terrified of numbers we're very good at what we do we're good craftsmen we're great graphics designers but when it comes to the numbers we check out but that's not okay because the numbers are the mirror to your business if you cannot read your basic financial statements that your income statement cash statement and balance sheet you are flying with your eyes closed or driving with your eyes closed and you will get into a car accident so it's not a wonder that have more than half of small businesses collapse after the first five years of operation it's amazing any of them survive so the idea here is not to teach you how to be accounts to teach you how to run a business and this is a wonderful testimonial on Amazon we have over a hundred and twenty comments on Amazon and this is a guy out of the UK who runs little bird gin and he said the following he said you know you've literally changed my life with what with this book it's so refreshing and we have 130 comments just like this so if you know number phobic if you have it I have a free study guide I would love to send you so email me at D Fotopoulos at gmail.com I'm happy to provide that for you in fact I she's just if we send the study guide to everybody that's on the call maybe that's what I'll do I write myself a little note and if you do not have accounting for the number phobic I encourage you to read those testimonials because it really is life-changing and is it worth it for you to spend 15 bucks to change the next 20 years of your life I think it is and the reason why I wrote the book is because there was nothing like it out there even the dummies books were too dang complicated so at any rate we have saved over 500 businesses with accounting for the number phobic and I want to thank you by the way for registering for this webinar for taking the step of faith to pay their small registration fee and the reason that we're doing it is because we find that if people do pay a registration fee they actually show up and this takes a tremendous amount of time and effort on our part but more importantly we want to give the opportunity on have the opportunity to give back to organizations that are doing great work and for this particular webinar we're going to be giving back to the men have feelings dot org and this is an organization it's a non-profit and it is dedicated to helping young men who are suffering deep depression to find the resources and the community that they need to have a hope and a future it's a taboo topic we can't lose our young men they're doing great work they've got fabulous collaborations and it's you know a young man between as a teenager into their 30s who are suffering from depression this is a really great resource men have feelings org and a portion of the proceeds from your sign up and registration fees will be dedicated to men have feelings Ben Thrasher is the gentleman who set this up and he also has produced this webinar thrasher consulting has produced this webinar so you know okay so today's agenda let's take you through it I want to show you how much cash is never collected in the marketplace in a year's time in the United States across whole small businesses it is a mind-blowing number I want to change your mindset about invoicing about what it is and how you should use the invoice process to work in your favor I want to tell you when to invoice your clients because that's a very big deal because if you invoice them on a timely basis and then a time frame that matters to your client you actually will get paid faster I know that sounds hard to believe what you will I want to teach you how to create an invoice that is so compelling your clients can't wait to pay you and does that sound too good to be true well it is true and I've proven it in the real world I'll take you through it today and I'm going to take you through how much to invoice client so you get paid two to three times faster okay so it's not just what you put on the invoice but how much the invoice is worth and then the invoicing strategy that will get you paid faster guaranteed and then I want to talk to you about the accounts payable clerk I'm calling her Suze just for want of a better name but basically this is the person who holds the keys to your cash flow Kingdom and she is like the Maytag repairman just the most unsung hero in the world and yet she is so important to your ability to collect against your invoices and to being able to pay your bills and then last but not least we're going to give you some action steps and they're going to be super easy I'm not asking you to work harder I'm not going to ask you to do all kinds of crazy stuff I'm going to give you an invoice management checklist at the end of this and if you follow this recipe this yellow brick road roadmap for invoicing strategy in a very short period of time I mean within the next two to four weeks you're going to see your cash flow improve dramatically within three months it could double okay so how much cash is never collected I want you to guess and I want you to put in the chat box how much cash do you think is never collected in the United States in a twelve month time frame across all 31 million small businesses now I learned this number about a year ago when I was doing a book signing down in Austin Texas and it absolutely blew my mind I have asked this question actually of about 50 very smart people in the accounting community and every single one of them was wrong and they were off by a magnitude of like a hundred thousand okay you want to know here's the number one hundred and forty-nine billion dollar is never collected in the United States and this is a number we got from the IRS so the IRS is basically calculating how much money has been invoiced and never collected are you ready for this a hundred and forty nine billion so Matt Darner of coal box CEO these guys help to collect against at 149 billion that's what coal box does it's short for collections box and I love these guys because they have a great app it is free to small businesses if you don't know about them you should and we have a very strong collaboration with coal box and it's going to get stronger over time especially in the second quarter but we're going to go after that 149 billion you know what that means that means that small businesses have invoice 149 billion dollars worth of services and products they have shipped and completed and never collected again they are essentially working for free which is not okay so my mission is to try to collect against that 149 billion so let's break that number down just a little bit so you understand how many businesses are at risk as a result the average receivable is about eighty-seven thousand dollars and if you take 149 billion and you divide it by 87,000 you end up with 1.7 million businesses that are at risk okay if they could all collect that 87,000 that's owed to them by one or maybe many clients we could actually write the ship in the small business economy in the United State so my goal for you is for your business to beat the odds I don't want you to become a statistic is no reason why you should have to write off a chunk of your accounts receivable every year after you have sweated blood to ship the goods and to offer the services that you have to your clients okay so that's really what today is all about so I for the first thing I want you to do is I want you to change your mindset about invoicing invoicing is not just an administrative function it's not just a letter or an email it isn't it is a legal and binding document and it is also like I said it's the tip of the spear of collecting your cash but more importantly it is the moment at which the clock starts ticking once you create an invoice and send it to the client that when the clock starts ticking on whether or not the invoices been paid on time or whether it's late and so on so if you don't get the invoicing right if you don't ship it out on a timely basis the likelihood you'll ever get paid is very small so I want to show you a very very simple diagram right so we know the sale is not made till you get paid so if you are a service provider this is pretty much what's going on very high level right very top-line you get the contract signed Yahoo you made the sale the client wants what you have to offer then you put the statement of work together and a purchase order together and in there you tell them how much it's going to cost them what exactly you're going to do for the amount of money that you're asking them to charge you got deadlines in there you got all sorts of stuff in there it is an agreement it's a legal and binding agreement between you and the client if you fulfill your side of the bargain the client agrees to pay you whatever it is you're asking okay so you deliver your goods and services and you do a great job and you're up all hours of the day and night because I know you are you tell me that you are you're working late hours on weekend you're taking time away for your families all kinds of crazy sacrifices you do a fabulous job and then after is done client improvement you invoice the client at least you should be so here's a little wake-up call in 30% of the cases that I have seen and I've canvassed about 5,000 small businesses in 30 percent of the cases they never invoice their client they do the work they ship the good they never send the invoice out now I could go through all kinds of psychological explanations as to why that happens but it doesn't make any sense this is the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot so that 149 billion is never collected against invoices that are sent out but it's not the full story there are tons of invoices that never get sent out case in point I have a carpenter he's such a great guy he's so so capable right really talented he helped me put together a very complicated workstation about seven eight years ago he has never invoiced me for his time and he spent half a day doing this and I want to pay him and I've even reached out to Mike half a dozen times and I said Kurt you gotta invoice me I wanna pay you he never sent me the invoice so I sent him a check for like $300 just so that I could go to sleep at night with a clean conscience but 30 percent of the work that's being done in the small business community isn't even boys and then that's why the 149 billion that the 149 billion is at risk not only because we're not in voicing or in voicing on a timely basis but we're not collecting what is really truly ours because we're afraid to do that or scared to do that so just so you know this particular webinar and all the subsequent webinars we're going to talk about in terms of cash flow management and managing your cash cycle we're using accounting for the number phobic principle as our textbook so if you want to get the most out of these webinars I encourage you to buy the book and keep it and then we're going to take you through those concepts in these webinars to make the book come alive in three dimensions and make it customized and relevant to your particular situation okay so this would be chapter six actually a number phobic six and seven so let's remember a couple of things there is essentially three sources of cash flow for your business and really only three the first is from operations right that's the that's the process I just showed you you sell it you deliver you invoice and then you get paid that doesn't always happen but that's the ideal circumstance and cash from operations is always what you want because what that is is that's your cost plus a premium that's where your gross profit comes from or your gross margin comes from and you run your business on gross profit you don't run it on on revenues right you don't run it on sales because there are costs related to running your business the other way that cash can come into your business is through loans but so but the reality about loans is that you have to pay cost of capital so you got interest charges and then you also have to pay your back okay it's not your money the only time you should be getting a loan by the way is when you have a purchase order in hand and you need to hire people or you need to pay for cost of goods in order to deliver the order to client you shouldn't huh oh hi there okay okay could you meet yourself please thank you so much okay and third and ask the way that you can bring cash into your operations is also through equity yeah please hit the mute button and we'll continue so bottom line is don't leave your cash on the table avoid think it's really consciousness okay Adam could you please mute yourself thank you so much that would be great okay so here's what an invoice really is your invoices can unlock the hidden cash in your business it's a legal and binding document and it is connected to your contract in that invoice you need to put payment terms in there in your sales contract you need to put payment terms do not wait until the project is over to talk about payment terms okay you talk about payment terms up front and the sale is the prom dress right it is and Adam could you mute yourself please thanks so much a sale is a promise right so when you are talking to the client or you actually find the deal okay the sale is a promise the invoice is the evidence that what you delivered is virtual contrast academic license okay hold on now because they have to Adam can you please mute yourself well but I applied for the other Adam kit okay I'm just gonna see if we can mute the blares all right sixth great job you know you're on their radar and then if okay I'm going to meet you there we go okay sorry about that guys Tiffany Alec angel Alexander Albert great to see you okay so guys sorry about that I'm just learning this technology - here we go what an invoice really is okay so your sales contrast and your invoice needs to be connected yes and what is the client really asking themselves when they finally get your invoice what are we paying for again like what do we ask these guys to do right so your increase is a testimony to what you deliver and I'm going to tell you something is ever going to tell you alright an invoice is a marketing document it is it is an accounting document but it's a marketing document because what it basically does is it demonstrates what you have delivered to the client okay so why because you don't just want to get paid for this particular sale you want to get paid and you want to close business for the second and the third sale also that's when you're running a super profitable business okay so the invoice is a testimony that what you said you're going to deliver you actually did deliver and then the clients going to connect the dots and go oh that's right that's why we need to pay Adam that's why we need to pay angel because you did such a great job okay so the key here is the fewer the clients that you have that buy from you with greater frequency is more cash flow and more profitability for your business that's ultimately with the strategy is it all about okay so here's the problem beneath the problem if you don't think getting paid is a priority then why on earth should your clients make paying you a priority so everybody listen guys Mia culpa okay I've done this too I've done the work I'm exhausted I'm just so relieved that the project is over or the goods are off the loading dock and then I procrastinate sending out the invoice and I go I'll do that tomorrow I'll do that on Monday and then what happens is one day two days one week becomes a month maybe even becomes two months or it never happens so you got to think about getting paid as a priority for you you have sweated blood for this you deserve to get paid okay so when should we invoice the clients and I'm going to give you something as a mnemonic to remember you should not let the Sun go down on a work day and if you have finished a project you should not let the Sun go down on a work day before you invoice the client if you have finished the work your day is not over until that invoice is created and sent out and does it take a little bit of time it does but it is work worth it so I ask you guys question what's the accounting system that you used right now because QuickBooks is pretty much the industry standard but what accounting software are you using right now could you put in the jack box what we know okay so we have let's take a look we've got we've got QuickBooks you've got sage we've got fresh books okay every single one of these has a very easy like three clicks of the mouse the ability to create an invoice and then email it to the client so there's absolutely no excuses okay don't let the Sun go down so let's take a look at when to invoice a clock first thing same day you complete a project I'm serious don't hold off to the next I don't care how tired you are you invoice that client same day and then the day the client signs the multi-phase contract with you for those of you who are service providers invoice the client for an upfront retainer okay if you have a multi-phase service project a web designers have this challenge okay if the tog refers might have this challenge if somebody wants to get on your calendar and be a priority you absolutely have to ask for some money upfront they've got to have some skin in the game before you start putting your nose to the grindstone to create a beautiful product for them okay so the other thing is the flip side to that is after the phase of the next phase of the project is delivered then you invoice the client so let's say you have a what you're building a website and there are three phases to the design after phase one phase one is the retainer covers the retainer after phase two is completed and the client approves it you've got to get it in writing by the way so that the invoice has teeth because if they don't pay you at least you can go to small claims court or at least you can go to a collections agent but the client has to sign off on it and then you invoice same day and then on the third phase you in boi same day as well so remember something too for those of you who are service providers there is always a time with the clients of T you know can you just change this so can you do that because as they get into the project they begin to understand that maybe they want something else that you can do because you're so talented they want you to do other stuff as well you gotta fill in something called a change of scope document and all that is is basically a memo that says on this date you and I have this conversation and we agreed that with the original contract is ABC but you wanted us to do de F as well we agreed that the deadline for de F is going to be blocked and we agreed that the cost for doing de F is blah plus blah and then you asked them to sign it and that becomes also a legal document okay so it's not an invoice exactly but it is part of a contract that indicates the clients got to be on the hook both agreement on the new deadline and also in agreement that it's going to cost them more money and once you put that together and you send it to the client the client can decide if they want to sign it or not sometimes they don't which is okay well what that also means is that you're off the hook for that extra work if they don't want to find it you don't do the work okay promise yourself that's how you're going to manage it so client billing cycle I want to talk to you about this I want you to look at the client the world from the clients viewpoint okay every client that you have pays bills on a particular cycle so every month they pay bills on the 20th or the 30th or they pay it every two weeks so whatever the story is and every client is different and this is just basically good cash management hygiene right they don't pay bills every single day because if they can hold on to cash for as long as possible that actually helps their business right it helps their cash flow but let's agree that if we invoice the client they have usually about 30 days to pay the invoice but what you should be doing is you should find out what the billing cycle is and the cash flow cycle is for your top ten clients is it once a month and what day of the month do they actually pay their bill if it's twice a month then what day of the week do they actually pay their bills they pay their bill on the 15th and the 30th that's fairly common like every two weeks what you want to do when you're sending an invoice to the client you want to be mindful of when they pay their bill and to the extent that you can you want to get the invoice in to the client before their next billing cycle why because if you get into the billing cycle you don't have to wait the additional 14 days or 21 days to get paid are you with me does that make sense okay how to create that comes to us of timing of when you should send your invoice out how to create a compelling invoice yes an invoice is not a dry boring document you can actually make it really interesting and let me show you how so first I start about the functional stuff that goes on every invoice and it should all be there by the way if any of this is missing you will not get pay okay so this is the money slide the date of completion of the project should be on the invoice and it should be the same date as the invoice there should be an invoice number on the invoice so that the client can connect their payment to an invoice number a contract number if it's relevant should also be in the invoice now I do work with Federal Express many of you know this they sponsor my webinars with score so if you go to score org by the way and you search on my name dawn Fotopoulos you're going to find four really jam-packed fabulous webinars and it won't cost you anything and so that's available to you it's 24/7 but at any rate I have a contract with FedEx that has a contract number and whenever I send them and in Boise I have to put that contract number on there because I need to connect the sales process to their accounting systems and it makes it very easy for them to pay me the other thing too is itemize the bill to the extent that you can don't be my contractor what is my contractor do he sends me a great big honkin bill for $4,000 and I'm absolutely no idea what caught what is covered in that four grand and so I kick it back to him and I tell them I have no idea what this number is and you need to give me an itemized bill and I need to know man-hours and I need to know how much the plumber costs and the electrician and the drywall guy and the painter no I want it broken down and I want your feeds in there too because he's a general contractor so your payment instructions clear and easy make it absolutely easy for an elementary school student to read and by the way direct deposit I find is always best because you don't have to wait for check to clear if you have a vendor number and the likelihood is you do if you're doing work with large businesses your vendor number or your EIN number which is your tax ID should be also in the invoice in other words better to put more information in that invoice than less is what you don't want is you don't want that invoice to bounce back and forth back and forth because that takes too much time and also it hurts your cash position because it extends the amount of time the client is taking to pay you if there are any incentive for early payment that should also be in your invoice so I have is a sentence basically if somebody pays me if a client pays me within 10 days they get a three percent discount and that helps their cash flow if there are penalties for late payments that also should be in there so again your payment terms should be an editorial footnote you can put it at the bottom of the invoice and if it's the same for all your clients it should always be there and if you don't know how to do that you should ask your bookkeeper or your counsel how to include that in your invoice but I know that I know that all the software that you guys are using will enable you to do that the other thing do not miss this please this is what really makes your invoice so compelling the benefits that the client has received from your hard work your blood and sweat should be in that invoice okay so it's on time we got the job done on time we got it done below budget the client has gotten 15 testimonials already the client has 10,000 visitors to their website whatever the story is use one data point that's a benefit of doing business with you and what that does also is it uncommon of prizes the work that you do for your clients and it makes that invoice really stand out if the client asked what are we really paying for you're telling them what they're getting for what they're what you're asking them to pay and if you have testimonials that you can put I know it sounds crazy right like well I want to put a testimonial in an invoice do it do it and a client might turn around and say oh yeah we're not interested or they may turn around and look at that invoice and go holy cow that's a big deal I always put testimonials in my invoices to FedEx I always do when we do our webinars we get fabulous reviews from people that were there that's changed my life this was so incredibly helpful you know where can I get more information not every testimonial goes on the invoice but maybe the top three so that the client absolutely knows it was worth it right that's the question you want to answer on that invoice was it worth it the testimonials on the benefits answer that questions okay so let's take a look at a typical invoice all right now this is a little tough to see because it's tiny so basically that's the typical invoice right your company and your logo and where you where you do business and your billing - and where your ship to your ship 65 units of whatever it is and you charge 300 bucks apiece and this is an invoice for about 12 grand okay so what's the problem here it's not that there's anything really wrong with the symbol but I gotta tell you it does not stand out among all the other invoices if there are a hundred and voices that have to get paid at the client this one is not going to stand out so the benefit the client received from the goods and services offered is nowhere to be found on this no testimonials from the staff or end-users nowhere to be found nothing about payment terms nothing about incentives or penalties on those payment terms nothing out that in here right and let this is a very subtle thing but please pay attention because this is worth all the marbles okay this is worth the entire webinar the invoice is too large the accounts payable clerk to pay it easily it's a double digit invoice it's a twelve thousand plus dollar invoice so I'm going to take you through why that matters and it matters profoundly so please remember before we jump off this for a second you don't get paid for what you do I did a bunch of stuff and here is the men boys for ten grand know you get paid for what you deliver what you do is a means to an end what is the client ultimately trying to achieve you're helping them do that so you're not just the subcontractor you're a strategic partner and the way you create your invoice will demonstrate that okay so you don't get paid for what you do you get paid for what you deliver those are the end benefits okay so what if you included testimonials on your invoice so these are some of the testimonials that are true they actually have put these on my invoices I called a meeting after her webinar meaning the webinar that I had given and followed her advice she saved my company twenty four million dollars a year or roughly two million dollars a month true story okay I bought your book changed my pricing and you saved my business so that was with a client that bought like three hundred books and I wanted them to know that getting that book in the hands of small business owners is life-changing and then there was a lady that I was working with she's an interior designer and she wrote this as a testimonial on her invoice she was the most responsive interior designer we have ever worked with and the flip side to that was and we got the job done in record time so what's your claim to fame okay what is it and you have a claim to fame write it on your invoices and no I'm not kidding you have nothing to lose okay so your takeaway your invoices have to have complete information on them everything the client needs to pay the invoice make it easy for them send it out the same day your day that should be why oh you are right your day is not over until you do this so prove your network and include testimonials okay let me just do it quick I'm a professor and this is driving me crazy there we go okay so prove your net worth include testimonials and do not go to sleep until your invoicing is up to date okay how much to invoice your client this is going to speak to the fact that the invoice you just saw with two large we're going to look at invoicing and payment from the clients perspective okay listen to me please no one ever is ever going to tell you this but I'm telling you it operates in the real world and this will completely change your ability to get paid you can get this you never send an invoice that is larger than the sign off privileges of your of the accounts payable clerk at the client and it doesn't matter how much the client owes you so for example let's assume that Suzy works for the ABC company and she is the Accounts Payable Clerk she's like the Maytag repairman nobody respects this woman she probably works like crazy she's not getting paid enough money but she holds the keys to the kingdom because she's the one who cuts the checks she's the one who decides the priority that invoices are paid okay she is a very very important role in controlling your cash flow and let's assume for a minute we find out because we asked her that Suzy can pay any invoice that comes across your desk for twenty five hundred dollars or less so what that means is if you send an invoice for ten thousand dollars to Suzy what do you think is going to happen let's go through it okay the headache begins some day you'll get paid or maybe not Suzy because it's over her sign off privileges has to get final from other people of higher authority in her place of work and the higher the bigger the invoice the more sign-off she needs so it's over five thousand she needs one sign up if it's over ten thousand she needs to sign off so it goes but every company is going to have different sign off thresholds okay if she needs to sign off I to see what's going to happen is this she's going to take your invoices just going to put it on the cyberdust and she's going to take care of all the invoices that are super easy to take care of the ones that she has the authority to take care of she's going to just plow through those because it's easy and she can get them off or desk right away but then she's got to start running around and getting sign-offs on all those other invoices including yours from very very busy people that really don't want to be bothered but they have to be because that's part of internal controls from the clients viewpoint the way this looks for you is that it takes two to three times as long to get paid if the invoice is too large because of all those additional signatures that are required okay it extends the payment lead time so what does that mean what should you do to avoid the headache these are my two little guys from number phobic they make me happy my my little elves right don't send one big honkin invoice for ten thousand dollars at the end of the month if the crown owes you ten grand what you should do is break up that invoice into four twenty five hundred dollar chunks so Susie can sign off on each one of those okay and I'll tell you what's going to happen you will get paid at record speed if you do this and it was actually quite funny I was I was videotaping a course on invoicing and the cameraman was a Kiwi he was from New Zealand and I was talking about this very concept and the guy got all excited to go it sure was true because he was a subcontractor right so he's a his guys small business owner he goes it's true I found that if I invoice smaller invoices with greater frequency it really helped my cash flow so if it's true for him it's going to be true for you too and nobody ever talks about this stuff so you know what don't believe me try it and see what happens okay you got to build a relationship with Susie you got to do it cuz Susie holds the keys to your kingdom she does and I'm going to give you a little anecdotal story in a minute the first thing you have to do is you got to know who is cutting your checks at your top ten clients and you should write those names down right there emails down and you need to be able to develop a relationship with them the same way you do with the people that run the businesses that you do business with right the CEO the president the founders whatever she's very important she's part of the client team you need to make her a strategic partner so if you've never done business with a firm and you're just starting to do business with them the sales organization signed the contract you need to introduce yourself to Suzy before you've had a chance to send an invoice so they know exactly who you are no one does this by the way but you should do it uh hi is this Suzy Jones hi this is on Fotopoulos I know you're very busy but I just want to introduce myself to you um I run d/f consulting we just signed a contract with ABC company and this is what we do and I just didn't want you to feel like concerned when you see any kind of documentation from us I want to send you a copy of the contract so you know what we agreed to do for ABC company and I want you to know that I'm available to you if you ever have any questions here's my name here's my contact information and that's the way you make Suzy a strategic partner okay so you're going to ask Suzy when you have that introductory conversation what size invoice is super easy for you to pay and that's code for what are your sign-off privileges and what kind of information do you need on every invoice Suzy I want to make sure that when I send you documentation I don't waste your time what do you need on those invoices and write it down by the way what invoices are difficult for you to pay what invoices take a long time or whatever what are problems that you've had with other vendors because I want to make sure I don't do the same thing and when does your company pay invoices in the month and then what's the best channel to send you an invoice via email direct to your accounting system what makes it easiest for you to satisfy an invoice what are we doing we're trying to make Susan Suge easy for her okay and she's going to recognize that so step 1 send the invoice out the same project is son and you can tell us as you know we're very we're very good about getting invoices out on a timely basis and do I send it directly to you do we send it to somebody else after she'll tell you and oh Susie when you're not available or if you're on vacation who is the person that we should send it to in your in your absence that's not a bad plan either to ask that question so you're going to send it before the payment date email Susie to let her know that you sent it so that she can keep her eyes out for it ask her if there's anything else she needs once you do send the invoice I did this with FedEx by the way is a new relationship and of course it's a very big company I'm a very small supplier so I sent them the invoice and then I asked the question is there anything else you need well you know what they got back to me and in fact there was something else they need I don't know how I did this but I forgot to put an invoice number on the invoice and if I hadn't asked the question that thing would have been spinning for months and I wouldn't have known why okay so ask if there's anything else she needs after you send the invoice when Susie pays the invoice for you you're going to do something that nobody else does you can say I don't have time to do this Oh trust me you do and it's really going to matter you write her a handwritten thank-you note at the worst it we send her an email thank-you note okay because that's really easy to do but a handwritten thank-you note makes you absolutely golden and guess what's going to happen the next time you send Susie an invoice she's going to remember who you are and you're not going to be a commodity you're going to be a known entity so let me give you a little story I work for the Levin Institute I was one of the inaugural facilitators after 9/11 here in New York City now his training small business owners how to run their businesses and I was co-facilitating with another facilitator we finished our program together we invoice 11 Institute my colleague got paid in two weeks and two months later I still wasn't paid when I tried to get some satisfaction through the Levin Institute directly they threw their hands up the person who was responsible and left the firm nobody knew what happened to invoices a whole big Megillah so then what I did is I figured out who in Albany because it's part of the SUNY system was the Accounts Payable clerk for this particular program and I found her name and I called her directly and I said this is who I am this is what I do I sent the invoice I'm happy to send you another copy of it so you have it but my colleague got paid in two weeks and it's three months later I'm still not paid could you possibly go to bat for me I just want to get this off my desk especially at the end of year I want to close the year out clean she was fabulous this lady her name was Lisa and Lisa took up my banner she took the invoice you processed it within three days I got paid and that was the end of it okay so it really does matter and again we're doing business with people not with machines so you're going to tell me you don't have time for this but if you have time to find new clients you have time to invoice the clients you already have and if invoicing is not a priority you're leaving I'm telling you you're leaving between 10 to 30% of your revenues on the table and you're giving away your gross margin in cash because think about this okay if your gross margin is 30% and you're not invoicing 30% of the time your gross profit is lying underneath that right foot of yours because you're not invoicing and if you want to know why you can't pay the bills this is why so the answer is you don't need more customers you need more cash flow okay so stop working for free all right this is a summary slide stop working for free you got it invoice same day as soon as you're done do it and do it as a discipline and anybody that works for you needs to do the same thing you got to invoice your clients as soon as the work is completed and it's the invoice every single invoice should include the benefits the client received by working with you and the invoice values how much the invoice is for should be consistent with what the accounts payable sign-off privileges are at the clients so remember Suzy in that twenty five hundred dollar example I gave you smaller invoices right twenty-five hundred once a week with greater frequency will always improve your cash flow versus one invoice for ten thousand at the end of the month and so make Suzy a member of your team okay and always find ways to appreciate what she does and if you know what her birthday is in the center a little birthday card I promise you that will go a long way too it's not manipulation it's just really finding ways to thank people who are in thankless roles okay so everybody who's on this call I want you to raise your right hand and I want you to make a promise and don't make a promise to me okay make it to yourself you promise good I'm so proud of you thank you for raising your hand I want you to promise that you're going to invoice all your clients who you have done work for and never invoice till go back at least over the last three to six months and make sure I don't care if it's six months old I don't care but go back through your records and you invoice every single client that you have done work for that hasn't received an invoice from you come up become current on your invoicing okay and then I want you to promise that you're going to capture and include at least one testimonial on each of those invoices okay the past ones and the ones going forward Angela I'm so proud of you for raising your hand thank you yes I want you to invoice after each phase of a project do not wait until the end of a project because here's the problem sometimes when you have a multi-phase project okay the players change especially when you're working with large companies and when the players change is a whole nother learning curve you got to go back through with the new players what's been done with still on the was still on the docket what's still yet to do and so on and so if by any chance anybody decides not to pay you when it happens right at least you're only out a third of the money or 25% of the money you're not out the whole value of the contract okay so invoice after each phase of a project you got to invoice small funds with greater frequency and even if you're invoicing weekly does it take a little bit of extra time it does when you get into the discipline okay take a portion of the week let's say it's one hour a week I don't know find a day find an hour of the day where you know you get a little bit of a lull and let that be your invoicing time and invoice everybody and everything you need to do for that week during that time the other thing that's really wonderful is you can time out when these invoices go out so you can create all the invoices I know all the software allows you to do this create all the invoices and then determine when it actually gets sent to the client because you can lay that up and if you're not sure how to do that ask your bookkeeper or your accountant learn with the AP clerk is at your ten top clients okay get their names and their contact information and then last but not least I don't want these webinars these office hours to be about me talking to you I want you to give me feedback I want you to go out go back to your client zones go back to your offices go back to your businesses and just test one thing that we've talked about in here just one thing and then I want you to email me or join the Facebook group number of phobics Anonymous and it's so great right so that you know it's a closed group I curate that group and I want you to get back to me to tell me what actually happened in your business when you took this advice and I live for your answers by the way so here's your checklist I call it the magic seven this presentation is available on in PDF format by the way only to those who have attended so I will send this to you in PDF format so you have this checklist all right I want you to have it I invoice every project that's been completed same day i invoice after completion of each phase of a project each invoice is no larger than the sign-off privileges of the AP Clark at the client I know who the AP clerk is at my top ten clients I verify with the AP Clark that the invoice is in order in other words once you send it out do you need any information do you need anything to make it easy is there a prayer bf problem in paying this invoice is another question you can ask I receive a retainer up front for multi-phase projects and oh by the way if the client is unwilling to pay you a retainer do not do business with that client I'm going to say it one more time with feeling if you are ready to sign a contract with a client and they are unwilling to put some skin in the game while you are signing that contract that is a yellow flag and really question is you should do business with that client and you should ask them for at least four references the people that have done business with them and beats by the way don't get stars in your eyes when you're doing business or the client that has a high profile high profile client sometimes can be the worst payers and right now we don't care what brand name they have we care if they pay their bills okay include one testimonial on each one of your invoices before you send them out so if you need to find me here's where you could do that join the Facebook group number phobics anonymous that's the link on facebook I hope you join you can sign up to the next webinar every Wednesday at noon I'm going to talk about how to improve your cash flow how to double it because if we can do that we can save your businesses in your future so that zoom link is for the next webinar on March the 11th accounting for the number phobic a Survival Guide for small business owners is our textbook for all of these webinars I encourage you to at the very least look at the comments on Amazon because they're real people um I have one lady in Canada who found the book she said I had an outstanding receivable for nine excuse me for two years it was a ninety thousand dollar receivable she said our read chapter six and seven I grew a backbone I went after the money and she said it was in my account to me she said holy cow never in my life would I ever get a return on investment for a book like that so I am happy to send you my study guide as my gift to you I am thrilled that you took the step of faith to come on this webinar there's going to be a survey we're going to send to you with only three questions did the webinar deliver what we said we were going to deliver that's really important and I want you to be honest with us the other thing too is we want to ask if there's anything we can do to improve these webinars because we're going to be doing this as I said every week and last but not least would you recommend somebody come to this webinar to listen your colleagues it's your small business owners anybody that is trying to run a small business and do that profitably because we're on a mission friends we're going to double small business survival rates by God's grace and please help us get the word out because that's what this is all about so you have this you absolutely have this and this is easy stuff and it's going to change your future so I want to thank you so much if you have questions you can unmute yourself and I would love to hear your questions so anybody have questions we've got about I don't know ten minutes left Angela Ben Adam please feel free to unmute yourself and and let's see where we are Tiffany do you have any questions okay I'm going to unmute everybody and I'm going to ask you if you can give me in real time how was this webinar did you get what you thought you were going to get was this helpful this is Angela yes it was beyond my expectation so I thank you Oh Thank You Angela that's just great thank you so much you anybody else yeah thank you we're just so thrilled that you're here you know we want to get a thousand people on this call the more people we can reach the more people we can help so friends I just want to leave you with two more statistics thank you very much Angela for your for your comment but this is what keeps me up at night okay we have thirty-one million small businesses in the United States three-quarters of them have less than 30 days of cash on hand okay that means roughly 22 million small businesses even more than that what am I saying about 25 million small businesses do not even have 30 days of cash on hand and just so you know you should have at least 90 days of cash on hand for you to have an adequate buffer through the rough times okay so 25 million in businesses that means 25 million are at risk but a quarter of those okay have less than 14 days of cash on hand which is not okay so I'm on a mission to change that number and thank you so much for being on the mission with me god bless you please take at least one bit of advice tested in your business and then you know where to find me I can't wait to be with you next week and thanks again so much for being on this call okay I look forward to seeing you and all your friends next week take care everybody this concludes this webinar of doubling your cash flow with no effort I'm dawn so popplers Thank You friends you [Music]