Reducing time spent chasing overdue invoices

golfplayer224

I work in a small business where overdue invoice follow-ups seem to end up back with the same people who originally dealt with the customer.

It’s becoming quite time-consuming, especially when most of the work is just sending reminders and checking whether payment has arrived yet.

I’ve been looking at whether automated reminder/payment systems are actually worthwhile for smaller businesses, or whether they create more hassle than they solve.

Interested to hear what’s worked well in practice from a time-saving and cost point of view.

Slinky

Payment at the time of booking worked well for me, or standing orders for regular customers. If you go with the presumptive close that that is how your business operates, it's amazing how many people will accept it, although obviously I've no idea what your business is.

In 15 years I wrote off under £1K a year from bad payers, a tiny percentage, and didn't have to waste too much time chasing payments.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6667168/reducing-time-spent-chasing-overdue-invoices

Firstly, review who you are giving credit to rather than payment up front.

There are some not too badly priced accounts receivable/credit control softwares out there that will generate invoices and automate chasers etc but automated emails really only helps with forgetful clients and a lot less with those that are intentionally not paying you.

roarrory33

We found automation helped more with organisation than with changing customer behaviour.

The biggest time saving was having reminders, payment status and overdue lists all in one place instead of different staff manually checking emails and bank payments. It reduced a lot of duplicate chasing internally.