A Beginner’s Guide to Billing and Invoicing

employee checking an invoice on their laptop

By Adam Walters | 02/08/2024 | 2 min read

Invoicing and billing are central to your business’s success. Without well-established billing and invoicing procedures, it will be difficult to get paid and maintain the cash flow you need.

Here’s a quick beginner’s guide to help you set up your billing and invoicing processes to get you started and ensure you're headed in the right direction.

1. Go Digital

Manual billing and invoicing are time-consuming processes. Even when you and your clients are working together without any problems, you have to wait for invoices to be sent through the mail and payments to be sent back. A mailed bill or invoice can take three to four days to be delivered. That means that if you go with traditional mail delivery for the invoice and the payment, you’re wasting at least a week of business time for payments to be made. Going digital removes that waiting time, allowing you to send invoices and receive payment on the same day.

Being 100% paperless is one of the best ways to set yourself up for success. Going digital lets you quickly organize, track, manage, and find what you’re looking for.

2. Automate

Billing and invoicing can be a complex process with multiple steps, but these steps are repetitive and predictable. Automate as many processes as possible when setting up your billing and invoicing process.

Automation saves you time from doing the same repetitive tasks and ensures more accuracy. Because there is no human element in automation, there will never be human error accidents. Simple, essential facts like your client’s name, address, and billing information can automatically be generated for every bill or invoice.

3. Integrate

Billing and invoicing should not be a silo within your company but should be integrated with other components of the business. Billing should be integrated with your customer management, inventory, and analytic solutions. By having an integrated system, information can easily transfer between applications, eliminating the need for manual data entry and improving company transparency.

Get Started with IRIS

IRIS has billing and invoicing solutions that grow with you. Whether you are just getting started and need help organizing your basic processes or are well-established and looking to optimize your existing structure, IRIS is ready to help. Get started today and find the best solution to your billing and invoicing needs.