One of the fundamental aspects of any business is invoicing. Whether it's billing clients for services rendered or products sold, efficient invoicing is vital. Moreover, if your business offers credit facilities, ensuring timely payment becomes paramount.

Creating Invoices with Ease

In a cloud-based system like Xero, invoicing becomes remarkably straightforward. We have access to customizable templates that can be tailored to fit our brand identity and payment preferences. This means that, from the outset, we present a professional image to our clients.

Automating Recurring Invoices

For those clients who make regular payments, such as subscriptions or membership fees, we can automate the process. This saves time and eliminates the need for manual invoice creation each time. We can schedule recurring invoices on a weekly, monthly, or any preferred billing cycle, ensuring that payments are prompt and hassle-free.

Efficient Payment Tracking

Efficiently tracking payments is essential for maintaining cash flow. Cloud accounting provides real-time updates on invoice status. Furthermore, we can configure the system to send automatic reminders to clients about upcoming or overdue payments. This feature alone markedly improves our cash flow management.

Enhanced Security and Mobility

In today's digital age, security is paramount. Cloud accounting systems, including Xero, implement robust security measures, such as two-factor authentication. We can also generate invoices on the go, using any internet-connected device, be it a laptop, mobile phone, or tablet.

The Bottom Line

In conclusion, embracing cloud accounting is undoubtedly a game-changer. It simplifies invoicing, payment tracking, and overall cash flow management. These user-friendly interfaces and automation features, combined with real-time updates and seamless payment integration, empower us to enhance our financial productivity significantly.

Efficient invoicing and payments are the lifeblood of a successful business. By adopting cloud accounting, we are not only saving time but also ensuring that our cash flow remains healthy and contributes to our growth. If you're intrigued by the possibilities of efficient invoicing and payments with cloud accounting, take action now! Explore our free cloud accounting guide and discover how we can assist you in migrating to the cloud, accessing key features, and providing the training and support you desire.

In this fast paced world of business that we inhabit, it's absolutely critical that not only do we invoice clients on time, but we get paid on time so we can keep the cash flow machine going, we can keep that liquidity at a healthy level and we get paid when we should get paid for the work that we're providing, for products we're selling,

for the things that we're doing for our clients. In this week's I Hate Numbers podcast, I'm going to be looking at how cloud or digital accounting, if you prefer, can actually help us to get paid much more efficiently and it has revolutionised the productivity and the speed in which not only do we issue invoices, handle payments, but actually manage the cashflow as well.

You are listening to the I Hate Numbers Podcast with Mahmood Reza. The I Hate Numbers podcast mission is to help your business survive and thrive by you better understanding and connecting with your numbers. Number love and care is what it's about. Tune in every week. Now, here's your host, Mahmood Reza.

Hi folks, welcome to another weekly episode of I Hate Numbers. This is the podcast that's got a simple mission. It's there to help you and your business make more money and by money, I mean profits to reduce your stress and anxiety and also your tax bills and for you to have the business that you aspire to have.

What's not to love about that? Let's crack on with the podcast. In this week's podcast, I'm going to be looking at how digital tools I'll make the occasional reference to a platform of my personal preference Xero simplifies many processes making your financial management easier and much more efficient irrespective of the size of your business.

Let's first of all talk about what cloud and digital accounting is. Now cloud accounting, what some people might call digital accounting is a modern approach to financial management that allows your business to not only access your data, the tools that you need from anywhere with an internet connection, but it also has a great part to play in productivity,

data management, knowledge, planning, information. Those are just to name but a few. Now, one of the most time consuming tasks, but necessary tasks in any business is actually getting the invoices out to your clients. If you're in a situation where you offer credit facilities to your clients, so you provide some services to them and then you give them time to pay,

if you sell a product, that product, you allow your customers, especially in the B2B world, of taking time to pay their invoices, then managing that credit control function is vital. Even if you're a business that takes cash with order, even if you're a business that takes cash up front from your clients, creating those invoices, keeping those records, knowing what's going on, still has a part to play.

Let's look at the invoice creation. Now, in a cloud system like Xero,

creating those invoices becomes much simpler. We have within that... templates and most cloud accounting software packages have what they call pre designed invoice templates. You can modify that, you can add your own branding, obviously your own address details, ways to get paid and that's perfectly possible.

For clients that we help onboard into Xero, when we take them into that digital world, we set up their invoices for them, putting their own branding and they have the invoices laid out as if they were generating in a conventional Word or Google doc. So it has the look and feel that suits them. If you've got clients who pay you on a regular basis, perhaps you're operating a membership, perhaps you're operating a subscription based service, or maybe you have clients that pay you on a regular basis,

you can automate that process. You can set up recurring invoices for those clients. They can be recurring on a weekly or monthly basis, whatever billing cycle you prefer to have. This saves you the hassle of remembering and creating them manually each time. What a delight that will be. Another powerful feature is those invoices

will be sent electronically to clients with just a few clicks. No looking for a postbox, no posting them out, and it eliminates not only just the paper invoices, but also the postage services as well. What I found when I integrated Xero into my own businesses is it sped up getting paid by clients, and the cash flow was much more positive.

What else can digital or cloud accounting do? Well, efficient payment tracking is another key feature. Now keeping track of payments, who owes you what, when they've paid, when they're due to pay you, is a vital part of cash flow management. One truism about cash flow is once you run out of cash... or access to cash, close the lights as you leave the building, your business will not survive.

Now cloud accounting simplifies the task of tracking. You get real time updates. So, you know, when an invoice has been opened, when it's been viewed, when actually somebody pays you, you can configure and set up your system to send out automatic reminders, configure that with your own message, use your own words, your own voice.

And you can send those reminders to clients, telling them that payments are coming up for payment, or perhaps they're overdue. You don't need to spend a lot of time on emailing or calling them. The system will do some of that heavy lifting for you. Not only do we have that feature, packages like Xero also integrate with payment gateways, whether it's Stripe, GoCardless, the many platforms out there.

Once it integrates with your payment gateways, the customer experience is much smoother, less obstacles placed in the path of your clients, and you're going to get paid more directly, online, and that cash will be deposited in your bank account, which is where it belongs. What other features do we have?

Well, we've got the security aspect. The data that you've got is kept securely in a data center. There are robust security measures. Users who utilise packages like Xero or other packages on the marketplace will have what's called two factor authentication. So unless you have that security dimension built in and you've got access to that, you're not going to be able to access the software.

So that's a great thing to have. You can also generate those invoices through your mobile phone, your laptop, your iPad. Whatever device that you have at hand, as long as you've got that internet connection, you can work from wherever you want to. You don't have to be desk based to generate invoices, to monitor what's going on, to keep an eye on the cash coming in.

The invoicing experience is much healthier. Much more positive and that increases the flow of cash through the business to keep you sustainable and contribute towards your growth as well. Now if you're thinking cash flow management, that's not such a big deal. Just imagine your business if you're generating around about 120,000 pounds a year.

That's effectively 10, 000 a month. Just think about what one delay will cost you. One delay is equivalent to about 300 odd pounds. If you delay that by 10 days that's 3,000 pounds there. And you're going to have to fund that and finance that cash flow, so not only is there an impact on your bank charges, your finance costs, but it puts an extra stress and strain, not only on your well being, but on your business bank balance as well, and we don't want that.

Now, in conclusion, cloud accounting is a no brainer. It simplifies the process of creating your invoices, tracking the payments. managing your cash flow. Those interfaces are intuitive, user friendly. There's an immense amount of automation features and they're growing all the time. They can fit in with your payment gateways.

You get real time updates and productivity equals increasing capacity without recruiting more staff. For me, it's a wise choice for any business, whatever size they are, to actually plug into digital accounting and the invoicing function in its own right. You can connect that with your bank account. Is worth the subscription cost in its own right now, if this is something of interest to you check the show notes here. There's a link to a free cloud accounting guide and there's a link there contact us if you feel that you need some help migrating into the cloud, fitting those features, accessing them, getting the training and development support that you desire.

Until next week folks, happy cloud. We hope you enjoyed this episode and appreciate you taking the time to listen to the show. We hope you got some value. If you did, then we'd love it if you shared the episode. We look forward to you joining us next week for another I Hate Numbers episode.