Recently we spoke with the manager of a franchise operation. She'd had a negative experience with online invoicing. Naturally, we wanted to know all about it. We think electronic invoicing is a great choice for businesses -- cost-cutting, convenient for customers, and environmentally responsible. If someone has a bad experience with e-billing, we want to know all about it, and to offer a solution if we can. So we got the details from this manager.
The EIPP company she signed up with offered different price points for different numbers of invoices. SmartPay does, too. It makes sense to us -- the company that sends out a few dozen invoices should pay less than the company that sends out hundreds. So far, so good.
However, this person's company had a nice little growth spurt and needed to send out more invoices than they had anticipated. They signed up new customers, prepared to invoice them -- and got cut off.
The e-invoicing solution they chose would only allow them to send the number of invoices they had expected they'd send. They had new customers to serve, new businesses to take care of, new inventory to order -- and they couldn't bill their clients with their electronic invoicing system. Once the next month arrived, with their new limit, they could invoice customers again. But for a couple of weeks there, the paperless sytem they had carefully set up just wasn't working. No funds were coming in to cover the costs associated with the new business they were generating.
Some, hearing this story, said the manager should have had a paper invoicing backup plan. We don't agree. We think they should have checked on the system before signing up.
SmartPay, for example, is priced according to the number of invoices you send out. If you expect to send out 100 invoices, you'll pay $89 a month. If things go really well at work and you send out 200, you'll automatically be billed at the higher rate of $129 for that month -- not cut off after your first 100.
Before you choose an electronic invoicing solution, ask a few "what if" questions. What if I need to make a manual payment for a customer? What if I change to a new accounting system? What if I get more business than I expected?
Make sure you're satisfied with the answers before you commit to your system. You can contact SmartPay with any questions, and real live human beings will answer them for you. Insist on that, whichever service you choose.