How Can I Save Time Through Automated Invoicing?

March 29, 2022

Automated invoicing is one of the easiest ways to improve your accounts receivable (A/R) collections process.

Primarily, automation streamlines collections and saves you time. When your team doesn’t have to worry about staying on top of rote collection tasks, they’ll have more time to focus on customer service, data analysis, and other processes that generate real value for your company. It also improves collaboration among your internal staff and adds much-needed transparency to your A/R process.

Here are some details about the benefits of invoice collections automation and how easy these solutions are to implement.

Eliminate the Rigor of Manual Processing

Nothing takes as long as manual collections processing. These days, it’s an expense many businesses can’t afford. And these expenses add up quickly when you consider the myriad ways that manual processes slow you down:

Hours spent on paper reports
Catching mistakes, human error
Poor team productivity

With accounts receivable management software, companies can eliminate these issues and reduce time spent on tedious manual tasks.

Forget collecting paper invoices, sorting through spreadsheets, and pulling up customer accounts. With a centralized platform, everything is available in a single, convenient interface. It makes complex processes faster and makes simple processes automatic.

Improve Your Payment Reminder Process

Steady cash flow depends on reducing late payments as much as possible. This is why automation is such a helpful tool for reducing effort and boosting collections efficiency.

Reminders are an easy way to get in contact with customers about delinquent accounts. This is a given for any invoice collection process, but many companies don’t have a structured process to make contact.

It’s not good enough to have an employee contact clients when payments are overdue. This type of manual process is subject to human error, and some reminders will inevitably fall through the cracks – at least, without automated solutions to back you up.

A/R collections platforms like Gaviti include automated features to make A/R task management easier. By reducing the amount of time spent on high-effort, manual tasks, your team is freed to pay more attention to your reminder processes.

Establish a consistent timeframe for contact and make sure to touch base with customers regularly when their payments come up short. Let automation handle the routine work while you focus more on your customer relationships.

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Increase Data Accuracy and Reduce Costs

Human error is unavoidable in any type of manual accounts receivable invoice processing, even with a well-trained team. Each of these errors produces discrepancies in your balance sheets that must be corrected, a lengthy process that can eat up substantial amounts of time.

Automated A/R collections software makes it easy to reduce these errors by minimizing the number of tasks your team performs by hand. This presents less risk of error from the get-go, but the platforms also include error alert systems that check for duplicates.

Across data entry, reporting, processing, and all other workflows in the payment lifecycle, automation gives your team an easier way to handle transactions.

Automate Follow-Up Processes

Even for small businesses, it’s usually not feasible to track all clients manually. It’s still a best practice to follow-up with all clients after you’ve sent an invoice. This is another area where automation pays dividends.

Within your automated A/R collections software, you can set triggers to send out these emails any time you send an invoice. You can also develop processes to send further contact emails, should your initial outreach go unanswered. It’s a small step, but it’s one less thing your team needs to worry about.

Find the Right A/R Collection Automation Tools for Your Business

Every business wants to save time and boost productivity. But these goals aren’t possible without the right tools. Cloud-based tools like automated A/R platforms bring new levels of efficiency to old-fashioned processes and help businesses get a better return on their investments.

Contact Gaviti when you’re ready to learn more about the benefits of automated collections. But don’t wait too long to start looking into automation – every minute spent on manual processing could be better used elsewhere.