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Paperwork isn’t exactly the most glamorous part of owning a small business. But sending and tracking your invoices is essential for making sure you get paid promptly and maintain a strong cashflow.
If you’re not using the right systems, creating and sending an invoice, tracking their status and following up late-paying clients can chew up a lot of time you’d rather spend completing the actual work or building your business’s visibility. With PayPal Invoicing, you can generate professional invoices that are easy to create and track, and easy for your clients to pay.
To illustrate how PayPal Invoicing can work for you, let’s look at Joe Harper, owner of Joe’s Golf Equipment.
Joe opened his golf equipment store in 2009 with a tight budget, two employees and big plans. Over the years, his business has grown considerably, especially now he also sells goods online.
To keep things simple, he has a spreadsheet to create and send his invoices. But with more invoices going out all the time, he’s finding it harder and harder to keep track of the invoices he’s sent, which ones have been paid, and when he’s received payment. He needed a better solution.
When searching for a good online invoicing tool, Joe decided he needed something fast, intuitive and accurate that made organisation simple. PayPal fit that bill.
To get started, Joe takes a couple of minutes to create a personalised, professional digital invoice template that included:
With this template set up, he can use it again and again for future sales. He can create multiple templates to suit the different services he invoices for. And he can even copy old invoices to create new ones for repeat customers buying second and third rounds of golfing lessons, or set up recurring invoices for those he knows will be back each month, so there’s no need to manually enter customer or item details every time.
Every sale is different, so as well as building on his templates, Joe can add attachments to his invoices, like terms of service, an image, or a document to sign. He can also allow partial payments so he can receive a deposit upfront with the rest due on completion of the service, and let his customers add a tip if he’s feeling a little cheeky. And he can change the language of his invoices for those tourists that come by for a quick lesson on their holiday, without knowing a word of Japanese, or Chinese, or French. You get the picture.
Now he’s created his first invoice, Joe can send it to his client directly, or send it to multiple people by adding them to CC – maybe his client’s assistant or business partner. Group invoicing, billing multiple people for a big golfing event for instance, is also available. He simply enters their email addresses, previews the invoices and clicks Send. If he doesn’t have a client’s email, he can copy the link and send it to them by text, or print it out and post it the good ol’ fashioned way instead.
With in-built payments, Joe’s customers don’t need to pay in cash, head to the bank for a bank cheque, or copy and paste account numbers. They simply click the “Pay Now” button to make a secure payment online using their favourite credit or debit card, or with their PayPal account. Joe receives an email as soon as it’s paid, and can also see what’s going on in his detailed invoice history. And for those customers who do prefer cash, he can still accept that and update the invoice in his PayPal account or the PayPal Business app.
Joe can easily reconcile his invoices and payments automatically in his PayPal account or the PayPal Business app. If a customer hasn’t paid yet, he can send a reminder in a click or a tap. Or if the agreement with his customer has changes, he can edit the invoice without voiding it.
Joe keeps his expenses and income details in an online accounting tool. The great news is, he can simply link his PayPal account to his Intuit QuickBooks Online, Xero or Sage account to track his invoices and their status, and have his fees broken down into separate line items automatically.
All this combined means Joe has more time to do the actual work and focus on growing his business. And you could too with PayPal Invoicing and the PayPal Business app. Visit PayPal Invoicing to learn more about how a quick, intuitive invoicing solution can support your business.
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