How to create the best invoice for you and your customers

The invoicing software you need to run your business is not an optional extra, a bonus feature, or an additional external add-on. Just because the invoice is one of the final steps in the sales process doesn’t mean the tools required to do the job properly can be treated as an afterthought.

The best invoice software can improve your cash flow, better manage your customer relationships, and give you greater control over your business. These are core functions of any operation and the reason why the best invoice tools are built into your point of sale system.

Invoicing gets you paid

Invoicing is how you get paid. If you’re doing it wrong and juggling spreadsheets and written ledgers or trying to resolve unrelated software packages against your core sales information, then it can become the worst paperwork in your professional life—but it’s how you get paid, and you’ve got to get it done.

The digital age thankfully makes things simpler.

With the right point of sale (POS) solution, you can create a small business invoicing system that lets you perform all your crucial tasks from the same all-in-one management platform that handles the rest of your purchasing, sales, service, customer, staff, and analysis functions.

Just as your smartphone combines all the possibilities of the internet into a pocket-sized point of access, a digital POS system lets you run your business from a single hub, which you can access from your smartphone, or laptop, or home desktop, as well as from work.

By placing it at the heart of your business the best invoice inclusive POS systems let you:

Simplify invoice creationAutomate account interactionMake payments easier for customersIntegrate invoicing with accountsProduce accurate sales reports

By including invoicing functions within the core POS solution you can create a better way to get paid.

The best invoice is personal

There’s never been a one-size-fits-all solution for small business invoicing, Every manager does things differently, every business has its unique product and service quirks, and every customer responds differently to the final account.

The flexibility of cloud-based digital solutions means you should be able to personalize your invoicing system within the overall POS setup to suit your business and:

Produce on-the-spot invoices to close out a routine saleEmail or text customers invoices for future online paymentsCreate ongoing accounts to monitor the flow of invoices and payments

Whichever method best suits your business, yourself, and your customers, incorporating the invoice function within your overall business structure unlocks a number of advantages.

1. Simplify invoice creation

Successful businesses have to balance the quantity of improving sales against the quality of service that generates them in the first place. An integrated digital invoice function lets you scale your efforts without compromising on personality. You can create a personalized invoice template that captures all the broad essentials of a sale and then populate it with check-box simplicity for each unique sale.

You can create invoices in seconds drawn from data stored across your business and furnish it with digital action items that continue the conversation with your customer after the sale ends.

2. Automate account interaction

The invoice process doesn’t end until the account has been settled, and sometimes that can mean multiple customer interactions. The best invoice functions let you automate this process so that you never miss a deadline and you never let a customer go unnoticed, but you can get on with the rest of your work.

A POS solution can include automated responses that trigger manager and customer messages when an account is approaching due, past due, or in need of urgent attention. It’s a digital conversation that helps get your cash flow moving, and hopefully gets you paid quicker.

3. Make payments easier for customers

Of course, the best way to get paid quicker is to make it easy for customers to pay you. A POS solution achieves that task by placing you inside the smartphones your customers are carrying with them all their working life. By distributing email and text invoices, you make settling an account as easy as ordering a pizza online.

Digital invoices come with embedded tap-and-follow links that take a customer directly to a final payment screen. This screen can be optimized to take a number of different forms of payments, but it generally involves nothing more than entering some card details—most of which are now auto-filled by your Android or iOS— and tapping “send.”

Easy payments mean rapid payments, and rapid payments help you meet your own recurring financial responsibilities.

4. Integrate invoicing with accounts

Invoices are a single stage in the complex business process and need to be treated as such. By placing it within your overall POS system you can create natural links between business functions and bring the whole system together to reduce waste and duplication and maximize revenue. You can integrate third-party programs, for example, and continue using the tried and tested software favorites, such as Quicken, Sage, or Xero, without having to double handle information.

It’s all housed together so you can build your perfect integrated solution.

5. Produce accurate sales reports

Perhaps the most profitable reason for using an invoice function that’s built into your POS solution is the sales analysis potential it unlocks. Data analysis has become one of the key drivers of small business success by revealing how a business makes money, and how it can generate more.  Everything within a digital system is countable, so the more information you feed into it, the more detail you can get out.

With the right POS solution, you can quickly find out what’s selling, who’s buying it, when they buy it, and what else they might buy at the same time.

As with all the advantages listed above, this only works when you pull together all the parts of your business into a single digital solution. Invoices can be just as influential to sales as your inventory, staff, and promotions, so it makes sense that they are included as a core function.

The best invoice solution is a business-wide solution

Invoices are vital to the cash flow every business needs to generate sustainable growth, so they must be treated as a core function of your operation. As such, any POS solution worth investment should have digital invoices as a standard feature.

The digital age has given small business owners and managers the chance to control their entire operation with the power and convenience of personal devices. To make a difference in your professional life, that control needs to extend to the end of the customer conversation and the final invoice.

When you partner with talech for your POS technology needs, you get a solution that covers the complete business journey. Our systems use the latest cloud-based software and mobile hardware to produce advantages from purchasing through sales and on to invoicing. Reach out to us today to sign up for a demo and to learn more about how talech can be your valued POS partner.