Electronic invoicing, also known as e-invoicing for short, is a type of electronic billing used by customers and their suppliers to present and monitor documents to guarantee that the terms of trading agreements are met. To simplify: Electronic invoicing automates the process of manual invoices to provide a more frictionless payment experience. Electronic invoicing encompasses a number of technologies and entry options by which an invoice can be electronically presented to a customer for payment.
Customers even have the option of paying their invoices online through a manual one-time payment, or by setting up automated recurring payments. With 2.4 billion people worldwide using the internet daily to shop and interact with one another in various ways, consumers and businesses alike are seeking out automated solutions to enhance the user experience, especially when it pertains to billing and payments.
What are the benefits of electronic invoicing?
There are many benefits to utilizing electronic invoicing include access to self-service portals and web-based tech that automates and streamlines both transactions and invoice collections. Furthermore, electronic invoicing makes it easier for businesses to manage vendor and customer relationships and provides faster access to information.
For example, processing an invoice includes collecting pivotal data and passing it on to the company’s finance department or bookkeeping system. Once that information is received, invoices must then go through that company’s business processes in order to be paid. This makes electronic invoicing particularly attractive to businesses due to the reduction of accounting costs.
Why is electronic invoicing important? Businesses that want to stay ahead of their competition must adopt and implement self-service portals to enhance the customer experience, maintain existing relationships, attract new customers, and reduce costs.
Taking advantage of internet technologies and the innumerable tools they can provide allows companies to manage customers and supplier relations. Electronic invoicing is just one of many tools and technology that provides great advantages to cut costs, speed up the account receivables process, and eliminate the unnecessary handling of paper invoices that rack up additional costs in stamps and hourly wages to handle and mail.
Furthermore, electronic invoicing decreases the time spent on payment cycles, the number of delayed payments, and interruptions to cash flow, while increasing overall efficiency. These issues and others can adversely affect your business’ capital and hurt customer loyalty.
Why use electronic invoicing?
Despite electronic invoicing benefitting businesses in a number of ways, many businesses and their customers are still shy about wanting to shift to such a system.
For any growing business, maintaining a customer base is key in order to make the business grow, which would in turn make adopting electronic invoicing an easy choice. After all, electronic invoicing can enhance customer expectations of convenience, speed, and easy management while keeping them from checking out your competitors.
Before making the decision to adopt electronic invoicing in your business, take a moment to gauge how your customers might react to this alteration. Can it be implemented without confusion and hesitation from the customers? Some of the more old-fashioned customers might prefer paper invoices? Would those same customers be as apt to change? Asking yourself these questions before making the shift will doubly insure a successful implementation, especially from the consumer’s point of view.
Have questions? Contact the experts!
If you’re considering adopting electronic invoicing for your business to address and improve customer experiences, North American Bancard, one of the leading merchant service providers in the market today, can get a specialist in contact with you within one business day. We’ll provide you with all the information you need to determine the right payment processing solution for your business. Founded in 1992 (and with hundreds of thousands of satisfied merchants served) the team here at North American Bancard has the experience to make electronic invoicing easy.
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