Just got sales invoicing software? Welcome to the club! Countless companies all over the US have moved over to sales invoicing systems. Most software companies say that adoption of these cloud accounting software was on the upswing prior to the pandemic, but that they experienced a true explosion in demand as remote working became a trend amidst the pandemic.
Whatever it was that prompted you to get sales invoicing software and however long you’ve had your cloud based sales invoicing system in place for, one thing is certain: you could derive more value from your investment if you make the software work hard for you.
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This might call for the implementation of a few minor changes to your SOPs – especially when it comes to reimbursement and expense submission deadlines and finding dedicated slots in your schedule for evaluating and actioning business insights delivered by your sales invoicing system.
Garnered from regular, hands-on use of cloud-based accounting systems, here are 7 tips to make the best use of your sales invoicing software:
Tip #1: Link all relevant sources
If you link your business bank account, data will flow seamlessly from there to your accounting books. Your data will always be live and up to date. If you link in your CRM and your Amazon seller account you’ll be able to get this data to also show up on your accounting dashboard that gives you a snapshot of all the key financial indicators that offer a view of your business health.
Make these linkages so that your sales invoicing software is able to do its job of drawing data from them, centralising it and interpreting it.
Tip # 2: Set up bespoke rules for categorisation and sorting
You can link up to 1400 suppliers with the best cloud invoicing systems like Dext. In addition, the software lets you set rules for automatic categorisation. The criteria is up to you. You may sort by tax or geography or any other relevant segregation criteria.
Left to its own devices the software will still do its best to sort and categorise your data by type of source document, month-wise and then date-wise within monthly folders and so on. However, you will attain maximum efficiency if you put criteria relevant to your business, specifically, in place.
Tip # 3: Implement deadlines for reimbursement and expense submission
The receipt scanning software in your cloud invoicing system extracts data from paperwork using optical character recognition technology. This technology is at its best – as you can probably imagine (it’s the same with your phone camera and document scanners) – when the ink on little slips and receipts is fresh and clear.
Moreover, if your data is to be live, then immediacy in reporting expenses is crucial because it impacts your financial data. After all expenses that you need to reimburse represent liabilities on the part of your business.
Tip # 4: Ensure that those deadlines apply to you too – lead by example
All those skipped tax deductible submissions add up to money you could have made by the end of the year. Encourage immediacy by snapping and uploading your own expenses and tax deductibles as soon as you incur the expenditure.
Tip #5: Don’t be stingy with users/ access offered
Allowing only a few senior employees the use of the software may be compared like buying a lamp and placing it under a table. Extend invoicing software access to team members who own the biggest chunk of data entry functions – these will typically be lower down the pecking order, but that’s where you’ll actually experience a growth in productivity.
Most software providers also offer you a lower per-user price when you opt for a higher number of login ids.
Tip #6: Set meetings with your software
If you had hired an analytics manager who you paid GPP 80,759 to, we bet you would have weekly meetings to pick his or her brains. Your software does the same job at a miniscule fraction of that cost. However you’ll still need to accord due priority to it, if it is to work.
That means that you need to ensure that you spend time on actually going over the business insights it delivers. You’ll need to observe your accounting dashboard, make notes and take action.
Having difficulty getting a private moment with your cloud based sales invoicing system? Fix a meeting with it. Pick out a dedicated slot and treat it like you would treat any other meeting.
Tip #7: Hold a 15-minute training meet (with cake)
Especially if you have a mix of age demographics in your organization, a training event might be necessary to enable people to utilise the software better. In fact, you might find resistance to change even among younger demographics because people in general are curious to change. Even your millennial minions might be open to new tech in their personal lives but more resistant to spending time getting used to new software in the workplace.
Hold a quick training when you roll out the software. Make it fun: have two people race to make a data entry and if you’re all under the same roof, throw in some cake and cookies.
