Manage Accounts Receivable remotely using an online invoicing tool

[et_pb_section fb_built="1" _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default"][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default"][et_pb_column _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" type="4_4"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" hover_enabled="0" sticky_enabled="0"]Remote work has been steadily on the rise over the past decade. Recent research by GetApp found that remote work nearly quadrupled over the past 10 years. With added impetus from the COVID-19 situation, remote work has become the new normal for many workers. This shift may be here to stay—a recent survey by Gartner found that 74% of CFOs intend to shift some employees to remote work permanently.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default"][et_pb_column _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" type="4_4"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" hover_enabled="0" sticky_enabled="0"]As a business owner, your primary concern about remote work may be the productivity of your employees. The good news is that there’s a lot you can do to help them be productive. If you put the proper tools in place to allow them to carry out their usual tasks efficiently while working remotely, they’re more likely to show the kind of productivity you’re looking for. This is especially true for Accounts Receivable, which is an area where many businesses end up using Excel for invoicing. A 2017 article by Small Business Trends revealed that a whopping 69 percent of small businesses trust spreadsheets to track their invoices and spending. The reasons are obvious—Excel is good with numbers. Calculations are easy, and it’s simple to manually correct small errors like an item value that’s entered wrongly. But for an invoicing team to function remotely, it needs more than a tool that can calculate. Team members need to be able to send estimates and invoices, collect payments, share insights and information easily, and most of all, stay up to date. This is where spreadsheets tend to fail, and where online invoicing tools can help. In this article, we’ll look at the different aspects of the invoicing process and how online invoicing tools offer an edge over Excel for remote work.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default"][et_pb_column _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" type="4_4"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" hover_enabled="0" sticky_enabled="0"]1. Collaboration In a traditional office setting, a lot of information gets exchanged during face-to-face interactions. Since this is out of the question with remote work, it’s important to ensure that your team members are still able to collaborate and keep the show running. Shared notes: If messages regarding financial transactions are exchanged via collaboration tools like a chat group or email thread, it means they are not linked with the corresponding transactions. As a result, your team members have to go back and forth between their messages and their invoicing tasks to get the right information. Since online invoicing tools are designed for a multi-user environment, they allow your team members to communicate in a space that’s connected to the work they’re doing. Users can record important details regarding invoices or estimates as comments that can be viewed by other users in the organization. Shared access: With Excel, it’s challenging to provide your team members with access to the information they need, while maintaining the security of sensitive financial information. Online invoicing tools, on the other hand, allow you to give users specific role-based access—you can define what they can and cannot view or modify. Shared reports: Collaboration is not just about conversations—it’s also about making sure everyone is in the loop. Online invoicing tools allow you to schedule sales and other reports to be automatically emailed to your team members. This helps them stay up-to-date on the team’s activities, wherever they are.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_button button_url="https://go.zoho.com/KwD" url_new_window="on" button_text="Access Free Invoicing Software" button_alignment="center" _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" custom_button="on" button_text_color="#FFFFFF" button_bg_color="#0C71C3" button_border_width="0px" button_border_radius="22px" button_use_icon="off" filter_saturate="74%" button_text_shadow_style="preset2" box_shadow_style="preset3"][/et_pb_button][et_pb_image src="https://blog.gotmenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/WhatsApp-Image-2021-07-09-at-11.04.45.jpeg" _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" hover_enabled="0" sticky_enabled="0"][/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default"][et_pb_column _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" type="4_4"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" hover_enabled="0" sticky_enabled="0"]2. Organization If your company does invoices in Excel, each invoice has to be created in a separate file for recordkeeping and sending to the customer. Organizing separate files for each invoice means a lot of nested folders, which makes it hard to find the individual files later. A better solution would be a central repository where all the invoices are stored, searchable, and available for your team members whenever they’re needed. Online invoicing tools provide this setup by default—since they are cloud-based, all the transactions are saved on secure servers, and team members with permission to access them can find and view them instantaneously.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default"][et_pb_column _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" type="4_4"][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" hover_enabled="0" sticky_enabled="0"]3. Keeping track of invoice numbers Accidentally duplicating invoice numbers can cause a huge and possibly expensive headache for your company. Besides making it difficult to match up incoming payments, it can also cause confusion during the end of the fiscal year and tax season. Keeping track of invoice numbers becomes more challenging during remote work when employees are working less closely with each other. You can avoid duplication by assigning number batches to different staff, but that requires an extra layer of manual coordination, and it makes it more likely that you’ll have gaps in your invoice numbers (which in turn makes it harder to check for duplicates). Online invoicing tools eliminate this problem by centralizing the invoice numbering system. Once you set up how you want the invoices to be numbered, the application ensures that all your invoice numbers are unique and continuous, even if multiple users are creating invoices concurrently. This eliminates gaps and duplicates, making it easy for you to find and match transactions.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_button button_url="https://go.zoho.com/KwD" url_new_window="on" button_text="Access Free Invoicing Software" button_alignment="center" _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" custom_button="on" button_text_color="#FFFFFF" button_bg_color="#0C71C3" button_border_width="0px" button_border_radius="22px" button_use_icon="off" filter_saturate="74%" button_text_shadow_style="preset2" box_shadow_style="preset3"][/et_pb_button][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default"][et_pb_column _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" type="4_4"][et_pb_video src="https://youtu.be/4g9T20wRdio" _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" hover_enabled="0" sticky_enabled="0"][/et_pb_video][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" hover_enabled="0" sticky_enabled="0"]4. Errors in transactions Excel, as good as it is for calculation, can’t keep track of your customers and items. When you create invoices in a spreadsheet, these details are mostly copied from other sources, like emails or previous transactions. It’s easy for errors to happen during this copy-paste process, especially if you have a high volume of invoices. If you find one mistake, you can advise your team members to be more careful. But if you see these errors happening often, maybe it’s time to question the tool! Online invoicing tools give you the option to save your customer Read More