Create a Seamless Weekly Billing Format for Quality Assurance

Weekly billing format for Quality Assurance

poor cash flow can be a real challenge for organizations particularly if you don't have much in the way of working capital if you generate your income through fees for products and services watch this video for four simple steps you can take to improve your billing processes to strengthen your cash flow hello i'm jane arnott and i'm the general manager for consulting at community business bureau cbb if you're paid in advance providing your service you're probably not too concerned about cash flow but the chances are if you're providing services on a fee-for-service basis you're paid after you've delivered the service but many of the costs of delivery are incurred before you receive payment this can create cash flow problems some changes to your billing systems and processes can improve your cash flow first look at the payment terms for your service if you're delivering services under the ndis these may be out of your control if you can control the payment terms consider what's a reasonable payment term for your service for example 7 days or 30 days this may depend on the type of client and the nature of the service you provide and you might want to set different terms for different customers depending on their credit worthiness second build clients as soon as possible if you deliver your service on the first of the month but you wait until the end of the month to issue your invoice and you have 30-day payment terms you're effectively waiting two months from delivery of your service to payment the chances are you've paid most or all of the costs of delivering your service by this point which is clearly not good for your cash flow where possible set up systems that allow you to invoice immediately after providing your service even if you're working in a highly controlled environment such as the ndis invoicing promptly will help to reduce the delay between service delivery and payment next follow up outstanding invoices your clients may well wait to the end of the payment period to pay their bills this helps them to manage their cash flow but you can incentivize early payment by offering a discount but only obviously if it's affordable for you you can also send out reminders and you should certainly be proactive in chasing up payment of overdue invoices and you could even have payment terms to charge extra for late payment in many cases a simple reminder email or a courtesy phone call is sometimes all it takes for an unpaid invoice to be paid and you can set up an automated system to routinely follow up invoices that have passed their due date finally make it easy for customers to pay don't put barriers in the way that make it inconvenient for your customers to pay you multiple easy options to pay invoices will increase your chances of getting paid quicker and should include online payments via credit card or bpay have a look at our video on cash flow if you want to understand more on this topic