4 ways that can make your company's payment process faster and more pleasant

Accepting and processing payments are two things that no business can afford to mishandle. Making sure that actually paying for your products or services is an easy and frictionless experience requires an out-of-the-box approach. Read on to learn about 4 ways that can make your company's payment process faster and more pleasant.

1. Send bills or invoices by email

It's an obvious truth, but it's also worth repeating - sending bills and invoices by email is a lot faster and simpler than going to the post office. The online approach also means that there is no way for your invoices to get lost in transit. Another benefit of online invoicing is that it allows you to take advantage of ready-made commercial agreement templates, thus saving you time and money spent on legal boilerplate. If that's something you're interested in, you might like InvoieOcean.com - an online app that lets you issue.

According to a report by mailPro, it takes on average between 19 and 40 days before a paper invoice is paid. At least 10 of these days are spent sending the invoice back and forth.

Traditional paper invoicing is an inconvenient and inefficient process. By going paperless you save time and money by eliminating such things as:

• printing, and the associated costs;

• stamping and addressing envelopes;

• buying and sticking stamps;

• going to the post office and standing in line.

It's easy to see that emailing your bills and invoices is a superior way of managing your finances - your documents are delivered instantly and the money gets to you faster than ever.  

2. Send automated reminders about late payment

Keeping up with payment deadlines requires a lot of work from you and your employees, but neglecting it is not really an option. Naturally, you want to minimize the number of late payments, and keep the delays as short as possible. InvoiceOcean can help you with that thanks to its built-in automated reminders, including such features as:

• Reminder frequency - by default, reminders are sent on the 3rd, 7th and 14th day after the due date, but you can change the frequency according to your needs and preferences;

• Conditions - reminders can be sent for every unpaid invoice, after the due date has passed, or on an arbitrary date;

• Content - you can write, format and edit your reminders however you like. InvoiceOcean allows you to use both HTML markup and Handlebars variables;

• Footer - a footer with your company's data will be appended to every reminder.

Try out this feature and you'll see that automated reminders not only help improve cashflow, but also strengthen customer relationships and save precious time.

3. Set up recurring payments

InvoiceOcean's built-in subscription-based and recurring payments are a the definition of convenience: you just set them and forget them. Your customers are notified and billed automatically, no action required from you.

In the simplest terms, recurring payments are a way to regularly charge your customer's account. If you run a subscription-based app or a box delivery company, just head to the Recurring Payments menu in InvoiceOcean and integrate our payment platform with your website in just a few easy steps.

Some benefits of recurring payments include:

• - No need to issue individual bills and invoices;

• Automated reminders about new billing periods and due payments;

• Easily maintain and monitor business relationships;

• Convert one-time buyers to faithful subscribers.

4. Use the world's most advanced online payment system

Choosing the right payment system means that payments get processed quickly and without issues; it also means full integration with your company's sales software.

In the case of InvoiceOcean everything goes on behind the curtains - your customers don't have to search around for your email or bank account number. The entire transaction is as simple as possible, and a notification is sent to both parties as soon as it is completed.

Another benefit is an interactive 'Pay now' button that you can place on your outgoing invoices. This way your customers get a clear CTA that incentivizes them to submit payment in a timely manner, which improves your cash flow.

What is more, you can also integrate InvoiceOcean with such payment providers as PayU, PayPal, DotPay and Braintree. Setting up the plugin only takes a few minutes, but the benefits are huge:

• Fast and convenient payments through instant internet transfers;

• No wait times for inter-bank wire transfers;

• No need to fill out forms - just login and pay;

• Automated accounting - no more poring through your bank balance sheet;

• Online payments are available 24/7, with no interruptions;

• Payments are typically submitted within minutes of placing an order.

Even if you only choose one of the above methods you will notice the effects immediately. Remember that time is your most valuable resource - so treat it with respect and stop wasting it on repetitive, unnecessary actions. Intrigued? Look out for our next blog post, where we'll give you a few tips on how to save your business even more money.

Back