Every small business owner has to deal with the delayed payments. It could happen for a variety of reasons. However, letting it happen because of your mistake is a cause of concern. It may highlight the need to search for a solution like online Accounting Software to streamline your invoicing and billing processes.

If you want to see positive cash flow in your business, you need to do whatever it takes to get paid on time. Let us see what could delay your payments:

1.Forgetting to Send an Invoice

You may think that you will never forget to send an Invoice to your client. However, in practice, it happens, especially to multitasking small business owners. The transaction simply slips out of their mind. They only remember it when something jogs their memory.

2.Delay in Invoicing Your Customer

You have learned your lesson and intend to send the invoice immediately after finishing the task. However, a string of other tasks needing your attention crops up, and the invoice gets delayed. In such a case, even an honest customer cannot pay you on time.

Why postponed a few minutes of work by days or weeks. If you are using an online invoicing and billing Software, you can do it instantly.

3.Sending Inaccurate Invoices

When you prepare an invoice manually, there are chances of getting the date, invoice number, or the price wrong. Automating the process with an online accounting software helps you in avoiding such silly mistakes.

When you are using online invoicing software, it updates the current date, renders sequential invoice numbers, and calculates item price using rates and quantity automatically.

4.Inaccurate Tax Amount

The businesses need to calculate taxes like GST or VAT while preparing the invoices. Getting the tax amount wrong could sour your relations with your customers. It could become a brand image issue. It generally happens if you try to do it manually. Most of the time, lack of focus or fatigue is the cause.

You can trust accounting software to do it right. All you need to do is enter the tax rate once and bingo, it comes with the right amount for each invoice.

5.Losing Your Invoices to a Calamity

The chances that you will lose your financial data to a desktop-computer crash are very slim, but they do exist. So are the chances of an earthquake, electrical fire, or flood. Today, people and businesses lose their data to a virus, phishing, or DOS attack. Imagine it happening right in the middle or after a fruitful festival season.

Online invoicing software saves your business’ financial data on the web servers. It remains protected there behind the latest antivirus and firewall software.

6.Mishandling a Multi-Currency Transaction

Today, thanks to internet technologies, even small businesses have international clients. They expect you to charge them in the currency of their choice. Converting your charges to their currency for each of them manually is a tough task.

Online accounting software offering multi-currency support is the only reliable solution to tackle this issue. Many such tools enable you to set the currency of customer’s choice to their account, foreign currency exchange rate, etc.

7.Failing to Mention Due Date

When you are in a hurry and are preparing your invoice manually, it is often possible to miss out on including payment due date. If it happens, it leaves you at the mercy of your client, and the payment gets delayed.

8.Not Including Item Descriptions

When you send an invoice, some of the clients check them against the information they have. If you miss on including item descriptions, they find the invoice incomplete. It could lead to delays in payment. You could avoid such a scenario from happening by including the required details in the invoice.

9.Making It Difficult for a Client to Pay

Nowadays, a client can pay using various methods. If you are favoring a particular mode of payment, then it is your responsibility to make it easy for the client to pay using the said method.

10.Using Generic Invoices

A customized invoice is a branding tool. It marks you as a serious business owner conscious about the image of the business. It says that you value every transaction and will do the needful to honor it. Manually prepared invoices fail to impress professionals.

You can use the professionally-made templates in your online invoicing software to create customized invoices. You can add the company name, logo, and trademark to make it impressive.

11.Failing to Send Reminders

You are busy with various tasks of your business. So are your customers. Send email reminders about the due payments. And do not hesitate to re-remind them.

Use your online accounting software to prepare an aging accounts receivable report. It will give detailed information about the customers with outstanding payments.

You need money to run your business. One way of ensuring that you have enough of it is to pay careful attention to the money coming in and going out of your business. It keeps you aware of the outstanding invoices and your liability. You can simplify it by automating the process by implementing online accounting software for your business.