Cash flow is one of the most important criteria when measuring your business' success. We’ve given advice on improving your cash flow from one of our fellow accounting services, and even had the team from Fundbox offer their opinion on how to improve sales to increase your cash flow.The most simple way to keep cash in your business is to get paid on time.Chasing invoices can be both awkward and time-wasting. Having an uneasy conversation with a regular customer just because they have an overdue invoice is something no employee wants to do.
However, an unpaid invoice still results in you running your business without the cash that you could have in the bank. Even worse, each time you're chasing these invoices up, you're losing precious time that could be dedicated to your business. Here at Eye on Books, we want to help you maintain your cash flow, in any way possible. We’ve hinted about Invoice Reminders before, and now they’re finally here!
What are Invoice Reminders?
Invoice reminders - automated emails to your customers, giving them a friendly reminder about their invoices. Enabling you to remind them before or after it’s due, you decide. Each of the messages are fully customizable, and once they're set-up, you don't have to think about them again.
Here’s a guide on how you can set them up in Xero.
Turn on reminders by selecting the tick box – they’ll start early the next morning your time.
Go over the preset default emails and review the dates to follow up your “sent invoices”
Remove any customers or invoices that are no longer necessary to follow up by going to Contacts or the specific invoice.
And that's a wrap, it's that easy, meaning you can go back to focussing on your business.
Set and forget – It’s automated
Once you have turned on reminders, your work is done. Each morning Xero will analyse each of your sent invoices for anything unpaid. Then a reminder will be sent out to any invoices that are past their due date according to your settings.
Reminder emails
The sample emails have been written to include all the important details. Words were specifically and carefully selected for these emails. We always suggest that friendly persuasion is better than intimidation. However, these emails may be personalised in any way you desire. Allowing you to both change the words, and add any other details about the invoice you desire.
Another feature enables you to add your preferred payment details to make it simple and easy your customers to pay.
Fine tune
Once you have reminders running for your business, you may wish to alter some of the reminder settings:
Add or delete to the series of reminders, you're able to create up to 5 reminders.
Generate pre reminders for customers that are invoiced less frequently – a useful warning that the bill is due soon.
Reduce time spent sending reminders for those small outstanding amounts that you are happy to write-off.Include a link to the invoice PDF if that is your preference and select the reply to address for your invoice reminders. You have the power!
Turn invoices reminders on and off for your business at any time. If you’ve had it off for a period of time, don’t worry, it won’t send a bunch of past reminders. Invoices will only begin from the day you switched it on! Reminders may be switched on or off for an individual customer if required. It's really up to you!
See what has been sent
The invoice reminder clock icon always shows when reminders are turned on for your business.
Easily check which reminders have been sent by viewing invoices awaiting payment. If you are missing an email address for your customer our product will bring this to your attention. If an invoice is ignored because the amount is small you will also be able to view this. This software allows our clients to get full view of what’s happening with your reminders at any time.
We’ve kept it simple
We have some fantastic dedicated solutions and you might be using one of these already.
These add-on solutions allow our clients to take our product much further and allow them to set various chasing regimes for different customers, while also allowing for more control on when reminders are sent e.g. time of day and days of the week, allow for invoice reminders to be grouped into one email, as well as some great preview and approval options of what is going to be sent next.
If this is the kind of control and options you need for your business the add-ons deliver this value.