What are the important features of great invoicing?

16/8/2020

Invoicing is an integral part of any business be it online or offline. Imagine a customer purchases an e-book from your online store and in return he receives a beautiful invoice, with your company details, confirming the purchase.

Actually, the invoice gives the customer a written assurance about the product he has purchased.

A beautifully designed invoice attaches a purchaser emotionally and helps in remembering you for a longer period, results in loyal customers and repeat sales.

Therefore the designing of the right invoice is a very important for the growth of your start-up.

When you prepare yourself for growth, instead of doing all by yourself, you devote most of your time in streamlining the task and delegating the activities to the most efficient management and the tools available in the market.

An ideal approach is to first make your invoicing streamline and thus increasing your average working speed.

I will discuss the important aspects which the invoice must have for the growth of your e-business.

Although you can use a MS- Word or Excel to make a good invoice but the professional look is desirable as it is more profitable.

Here are some features of a good invoice:

Colorful designs

The invoicing should be easy to create as per your convenience and beautiful in design so as to gain the attention and impress the customer.

You can impress your clients with professionally made and beautifully designed invoices. It should have the feature to add your startup name, logo and the business details.

Sending quotation

Many times your client asks for the price estimate about the certain number of products if he wishes to purchase from you.

Well, it is a kind of quotation which you send to your client and the good invoicing software can help you out with this activity. It sends the estimate to the client and let him review it and have the option to convert into invoices if confirmed by the client.

Sometimes, the estimate gets held in the e-mail of the client for the longer duration and your product prices may change or fluctuate during this time period.

Therefore, your invoicing must have the feature expiration and the reminder option which reminds the client of your quotation and take action in time.

Effective financial reporting

The good invoicing should have the feature of displaying or exhibiting the financial summary of your online store like total invoiced, payment received and the total outstanding, giving you the glance of your business performance.

In this way, you can track the products sold, expenses, profit & loss on the daily basis, helping you in making an effortless management.

Secure integrated online payment gateways

It must have the feature to accept the online payment of the product that you have sold to the client and has the feature to serve the clients across different countries of the world.

It has the option of the multiple payment gateways which support the multiple currencies like Paypay, Stripe, Braintree, wepay etc. offering the flexibility to the client to complete the payment in different ways.

The feature of the partial payment can be an added advantage because there are certain terms and conditions in which client pays in installment to the buyer, allowing the clients to make the partial payments as per business terms and the conditions.

The payment gateway must have the feature to keep the shared information confidential and preserve the identity of the client. A feature of payment reminder can save your time and make the payment process more hassle-free.

Thanking them for making the payment.

Database

It has the feature to maintain the database of your clients like Name, Telephone number, e-mail id Birthday’s etc so that you can communicate them or can offer them a new product in the future.

The facility to maintain the database of your product and the services and the feature to import and export the database online can make your task smooth and easy.

Access invoice when mobile

Most of the entrepreneurs and freelancers travel one point to another to grow their business and this thing must not keep them away from their invoicing.

The invoicing software must have the feature which allows them to access the invoicing on tablet and the smartphones.

So whether you are in a trade fair, clients meeting or travelling abroad, your finances are moving along with you.

Strong technical support

You need no to be a technical expert to solve any problem arising while operating or designing the invoice. The invoicing software must have the strong technical support and the team which can help you round the clock when needed to solve your query.

The following are the top 10 invoicing software which can streamline your invoicing and make your task easier:

Sighted
Freshbooks
Zoho
Invoicera
Harvest
Simplybill
Hiveage
Wave
make sometime

having the following same common features of e-invoicing:

Cost saving
Environment-friendly
less storage and hassle-free
greater clarity
Faster payment

Conclusion

It is true that spending too much time on the paperwork can damage your productivity, reducing your earning potential.

Just as the payment becomes digital so as the invoices, with e-invoices you can offer discounts on the early payment, can send duplicate invoices in the PDF form and can send recurring invoices.

The invoice template or the software is the effective way to streamline you’re invoicing, thus helping you in going easy with your business process, increasing your productivity and you never know that this could turn out to be one of the effective ways of making strong customer relationships through your online business.