The billing process is an essential part of any agency, and is needed to keep your business running smoothly and profitably.

With numerous clients, quotes and invoices being sent out, it is important to have a process in place which enables you to stay on top of everything. If your billing system is confusing, it can lead to profitability issues, from the wrong costs being billed, to wasted time spent checking for errors.

In addition, an inefficient system could lead to invoices being sent out late which can lead to cash flow problems.

With so much room for errors, it’s important to have an efficient billing system set up to ensure that all projects are billed for correctly.

If you are finding yourself weighed down by the billing process, then read on for some guidance on how to make the job easier, and take some of the pressure off month end.

Use the correct system

Employing a software that can produce draft invoices from previously input data, such as quotes, billing plans or timesheets will improve accuracy and make project billing more efficient.

This will save you precious time on checking and rechecking your bills, speed up how quickly you receive payment and improve cash flow. It will also mean that if there are any problems with the bills, then you can resolve them quickly before debts accumulate.

Financial tools such as this will improve the efficiency of project billing, which means that you can dedicate more time to different aspects of your role, which is a great help in fast-paced agencies.

Multi-currency support

Ensuring that the billing system has multi-currency support will make working with overseas clients much quicker, by cutting down the time you would need to spend manually working out any differences in currencies.

This will tighten your control over your finances, by reducing the risk of any small human errors being made when converting or dealing with different currencies, which can lead to delays and cash flow problems.

Set up prompts and alerts

No matter how organised you are with your billing, helpful prompts here and there are always appreciated.

Making sure that you have reminders set for jobs that have yet to be billed, or important billing dates, will mean that you get your invoices sent out on time and nothing falls through the cracks. Any suitable system should allow you to pull all these together onto a single billing schedule, with the facility to quickly convert these billing plans into invoices.

These prompts and billing plans can make an incredible amount of difference during extremely busy periods, and give you peace of mind that nothing is going to be forgotten about.

Integrate your systems

To improve the efficiency of your processes, from quoting to payment, it might be necessary for you to use multiple systems.

However, it defeats the object and ruins your productivity if you are having to manually input information from one system into another. Doing this will add unnecessary time to the billing procedure, and leave you vulnerable to errors and a lack of consistency.

Certain project management systems, such as Synergist, can give an end to end control of your project finances, but when it comes to payment, can be seamlessly integrated with account packages such as Sage and Xero app. This saves valuable time for other tasks.

As you can see, there are plenty of tips and tricks that you can utilize to make your billing process more efficient, and save time and energy for yourself. Following these guidelines should have a noticeable difference on your productivity levels, and reduce your stress when billing comes around.