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Almost 9 in 10 (88%) Excel Spreadsheets contain errors costing businesses time, effort, and sometimes big money as in the case of “London Whale”. The good news is- there is modern technology that will seamlessly manage your invoice tracking and improve your cash flow. We have listed three main benefits of ditching Excel for invoice tracking.
Cash flow management is key to business survival. Making a successful sale is part of the story. The second part is to get cash on for your products and services. Tracking the status of your invoices is an integral part of healthy cash flow. If you are still relying on Excel to keep track of the paid and overdue invoices, we have listed three reasons why you should stop.
Reason 1 to Get Rid of Excel for Invoice Tracking:
To Improve Your DSO
While excel can be handy in monitoring some of your business data, it is certainly outdated for managing your Accounts Receivable (AR). It includes several manual tasks and most importantly it requires paying extra attention to the invoices that are past due. When the client misses the payment deadline it is important to send a reminder. In some cases, it is necessary to negotiate the repayment terms. According to HubSpot Research, 49% of the small and medium businesses have a hard time following up on the late payments when using manual invoice tracking like Excel.
Modern technology has evolved and now it is effectively can improve your cash flow. According to the PYMNTS survey, the business that embraced the modern digital tools for AR has improved their DSO- 52% in the construction industry and 87% in advertising.
Kolleno AR cloud-based software is an extension of your business’s accounting software. The sophisticated technology behind it can track the payment behaviour of your clients and send payment reminders prior to and past the due date. The best part is that the algorithms estimate the timing to maximise and speed up your payments. Eventually, it will positively impact your DSO.
According to the Adroit Market Research, the market size of the accounts payable automation will reach $4 Bn by 2025. The reason for the growth is not only the technological advances in managing the accounting cycle. It is also due to the focus on internal liquidity improvements. Cash flow is not only depending on the turnover but also the speed at the customers will pay their invoices.
Reason 2 to Get Rid of Excel for Invoice Tracking:
To Reduce Costly Errors of Using Excel for AR
Keeping a great relationship is essential for having a high number of returning customers. Therefore, sending a reminder email to pay the overdue invoice should be part of the communication strategy. If you are using excel for tracking b2b clients that are overdue on their invoices, then you, probably, send messages irregularly or even randomly. What is more, imagine the client has received a reminder email from you with the incorrect details. That happens often when the user copies and pastes the information from the excel spreadsheets. It is easy to take the information from the wrong column. As a result, your customer might end up with the wrong order reference, amount, etc.
This not only extends your DSO, as realising and fixing the error takes time, but also will make your company look unprofessional. Your business will have to send an apology email to the customer. These things happen, and the client likely will understand that the error is not representative of your business’s reputation. However, the outstanding invoices will negatively impact your cash flow.
The solution is to automate your reminders and use the technology to eliminate the errors that are likely to occur using excel tracking. Kolleno’s cloud-based solution is completely compatible with major accounting softwares. It will track and prepare reminders by extracting the required information from your accounts. Moreover, the best timing and frequency will be calculated using machine learning technology, speeding up the payments. As a result, your cash flow improves.
Reason 3 to Get Rid of Excel for Invoice Tracking:
To Increase Efficiency of Your Staff
Embracing digital AR management solutions translates into increased team efficiency across industries from 76% to 83% depending on the industry. There are several reasons why. Firstly, your employees won’t need to manually track and go through the excel spreadsheets identifying the customers that are close to the payment deadline, or already delayed the payment. Secondly, the preparation of the invoice will require manual work, not alone sending the reminders. Moreover, some staff may find it stressful approaching the client who misses the payment. This may result in the overall motivational level decreasing. The staff has to focus on their goals, rather than chasing the late payments, that the technology is perfectly capable of.
Besides, with the manual invoice processing, there are more team interactions required. This can take a lot of extra hours, especially during the increased work-from-home policies. With Kolleno the late invoices won’t have to sit in your excel and will automatically be processed by our software. The client will receive tailored reminders with the most suitable tone of voice via the most appropriate communication channel.
Moreover, the interface summarises the payment behaviour and automatically prepares the ageing reports for a better understanding of the overall status of your Accounts Receivable. Your customers will be impressed by the communication style, timeliness of the emails, and the convenient payment procedure offered to them. Contact Kolleno today and see for yourself how we can bring digital transformation to your accounts receivable.
