A small business owner wears a lot of hats. He is the owner, the marketer, the seller, the accountant, and much more.

 

Productivity is the key to running a business successfully and sustainably. But when one person is working on multiple tasks, productivity is to be sacrificed as they have to spend their time doing less important tasks.

 

According to a study, 20% of small businesses fail in their first year, 30% of small businesses fail in their second year, and 50% of small businesses fail after five years in business. Finally, 70% of small business owners fail in their 10th year in business.

 

And one of the main factors behind is productivity. The productivity of a business, its success and its survival are all interrelated. Therefore if you want your business to grow, you will have to achieve productivity. You will have to category the project scope and the tasks of different projects. i.e.

 

1. Important Tasks
2. Less important tasks
3. Tasks that can be delegated to the employees
4. Tasks that can be automated
5. Tasks that can be outsourced.

 

A mistake that many small business owners make is that they do not consider time and money as equally important. Time is as important as money. Therefore, your main focus should be on important tasks and is after doing those, if you still have time then only you should do other tasks. If you feel that 24 hours a day is less time, then this is an indicator that you are not working productively and you have not organized your work and tasks efficiently.

 

Don’t worry! The IT sector has a solution for everything. If you wish to manage projects more efficiently, there are project management software like wrike project management software and many wrike alternatives too, likewise, for billing, they have blessed us with easy and simple billing software.

 

What is a billing software?

 

Billing software is used to handle and track billing as well as for invoicing customers for services and products. Some billing software provides a feature to track your working hours and based on that, you can charge your clients.

 

You can also measure the performance of your business using billing software as it collects the data of customer order entry and what goods or services were sold to them. Using this you can easily analyze the performance and you can also create the reports according to your project milestones.

 

Why is billing software used?

 

• To prepare an invoice that is fixed, professional, neat and error-free.
• To keep a record of the customers, what they bought and the cost.
• The invoice prepared by billing software contains all of the costs for which a customer is charged.
• To figure out which customer is the most regular and profitable customer.
• To create custom reports.
• Maintain debtors and creditors accounts.
• Maintain the details of the payments that are received by the customer.
• Track current inventory.
• Track material receipts from the suppliers.
• To improve the efficiency of the staff.

 

Here are some points on how billing software can help in increasing your business’s productivity:

 

1.  Saves time:

 

Time and money are the two most valuable assets that you have.

 

And if you are a small business owner, your goal should be to get more work done in less time. Billing and invoices take a lot of time and not everyone is a master at accounts. In such a case, billing software can be a lifesaver.

 

Invoicing is a lengthy and repetitive process. It involves processes and fill-out information like invoice number, date, the quantity provided, rate, name of the goods or services provided, total dues, discount, etc. Different invoicing models that are presented in the billing software can help you in simplifying the process.

 

2.  Minimize errors:

 

Invoicing includes various calculations and processes and humans tend to make more errors than computers.

 

These small errors cost you not only on a monetary basis but it also diminishes your brand value. Moreover, it takes a lot of time and energy to solve such errors. This can frustrate your customers and there is a chance that they will never buy from you again.

 

However, if you use billing software, you can create an appropriate invoice by compiling all the data. As the work is done by computer and not by any employee or you, the invoices are error-free and can be created in less time.

 

3.  Accounting and payment reminders:

 

Traditional accounting or tally requires you to check all the bills that are due today. But if you are working on billing software, you can get notification of all the due bills of today and also about the bills that you receive.

 

Therefore you are now free and you don’t have to go through the files to see which payments are to be made today and which are to be received today. Therefore, this automation can free up a lot of your time and you can now shift your focus to more important tasks.

 

There is also a reminder feature. Suppose, you have to provide a follow-up to your customers for the payments, you can set a reminder 5 days prior to the due date or whatever remainder period you wand to save according to your accounting project scheduling.

 

4.  Brand Identity:

 

Instead of going out and buying printed papers that have your brand’s logo and other details, you can use billing software as they a feature that can add logos, colour schemes and fonts to your invoice. Therefore, your invoice will look how you want it to look.

 

This helps in increasing your brand awareness and as more and more people will become aware of your brand, you will get more sales and there would be more chances that you will be paid on time.

 

It was found in a study that invoices that contain all this information have a higher chance of getting paid on time.

 

5.  Reporting becomes simple:

 

Reports are very important for any business as using them you can know where your business stands.

 

But it is a very time-consuming task and it requires regular updates to be accurate and true. But why should you perform a time-consuming task that can be automated?

 

Using billing software, you can create simple and all-encompassing reports. This way you can also know who are your profitable and repetitive customers and based on these reports you can make various important decisions.

 

Therefore, billing software will remove the need for creating manual reports and the reports created by billing software would be error-free.

 

6.  24/7 service:

 

You can manage your customer information and accounts from home, office or even while travelling and that too anytime as many billing software are cloud-based software.

 

You can create, send or review invoices from your desktop, smartphone or tablet. Therefore, using billing software enables you to serve your customers 24/7.

 

This can strengthen your customer service and your relationship with the customers. You can also create reports using your mobile, thus, if you wish to review the invoices when you reach home, you would be able to do so and know how your business performed today.

 

7.  Provides security:

 

Losing an invoice paper is a very common issue that most businesses face. It is possible that you might lose the paper while travelling or it can also get misplaced in your office. Finding it would take a lot of time and will cause stress and if there is any important information written, it can cause the worst damage too.

 

Using a billing software will save and keep all the information online and on a cloud. Choose a billing software that has PCI security standards clearance. It is very hard to receive and is the safest security.

 

It keeps all the data safe for you and makes it available to you whenever you want it.

 

8.  Multi-currencies and languages for your international business:

 

If you do international business, billing software has a feature known as the converter, which can easily convert the currency and can send the online invoice to the customer.

 

Therefore, it makes it easier for you to receive and make payments around the world without any difficulty. Therefore it works as a converter(as most of the communication tools have the conversion option) for your international business.

Author Bio:

Shyamal is the Founder of SmartTask, an online work management tool that’s helping teams be more productive by having clarity on who’s doing what by when. Has a penchant for researching and sharing strategies that could benefit a team’s productivity.