Tuesday, June 21, 2011
A professional looking (and professional feeling) invoice can definitely go a long way in planting a seed of trust and comfort with your clientele. In fact, a neat, legible, one-page invoice can make the difference between receiving a payment and your invoice winding up in someone’s trash can. In addition, the professionalism displayed by your invoice can be a factor in whether or not you get another order/sale/request for service from that customer. In other words, every little detail makes an impression. Many times, the last thing your customer sees as a representation of your business is when they are paying the invoice what impression do you want to make?
So other than using Abakoos Invoicing Software how can you make sure your invoices mean business and succeed in delivering payment?
1. Neat, legible, well organized format - a nice header, easy to read, and consistent font types, and black on white type is the best way to go for a proper looking invoice. Don’t make your invoice’s formatting sloppy, using mismatched fonts and colors, or crumbled up, dirty, or torn printouts. The person opening up the invoice needs to feel that some time was put into creating the invoice, not being underneath a couple of boxes of pizza from your office party.
2. Use only one piece of paper - don’t send a 20 page long printout of every item purchased, or service rendered, or some shipping order off of the factory floor condense everything into a few line items and send it off. This saves aggravation for your customer and it also saves a couple of bucks. The easier it is for your customer to identify the bill, the products and services they are being billed for, the easier it will be for them to process payment.
3. Invoices are to be typed, not hand-written - Hand-written notes should be saved for doctor’s prescriptions, not an official document requesting payment. Hand-writing is often sloppy, messy, and sends the message that you rushed to get something on the invoice that you almost forgot about, or that you just ran out of printer ink. If you need to send a client something in hand-writing, use a Hallmark card.
4. Use a white envelope with clear mailing address front - Don’t use a small, personal envelope with an I Love Lucy stamp from the post office to remind someone that they owe you money. Use the standard #10 window envelope with your corporate logo and letterhead to handle this task.
For those of you already using Abakoos’s Invoicing Software, you don’t need to worry about whether your invoice is going to look professional or not. Our invoices are clear, easy to understand, and to the point, representing your business extremely well. For those who haven’t tried our invoicing software, we welcome you to give us a try and follow some of the simple, yet effective, steps outlined above.
Monday, November 29, 2010
When considering what to do and what to use to send out your invoices, it’s important to evaluate the pros and cons between the two most used types of delivery methods - regular mail (also known as snail mail) and email. These invoicing options are used by almost every business on the planet by either mailing out their invoices in standard mail (or FedEx or UPS), or, they email their invoices out.
Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each:
Standard Mail Invoices - Pros: Unlike Emails, it’s much tougher for Standard Mail to be eaten up by a Spam or Junk folder. The recipient doesn’t need to add your email address to their trusted user list, and a standard invoice looks (and feels) official. You can take it one step further by requiring a signature upon delivery to ensure that someone in the organization received the invoice.
Standard Mail Invoices - Cons: Mail costs money, and as USPS Stamps continue to rise in price, sending letters continues to be more and more expensive. To send a Standard Mail Invoice, you need to print out the invoice, put in an envelope, stamp / write / type the address label(s), and then put a stamp on it - all of which cost money. Also, an invoice sent by mail will take 3-5 business days to arrive. The bottom line is it costs more to send the invoice and takes longer for your invoice to arrive - which delays the time in which you get paid!
Email Invoices - Pros: Email Invoices cut down on printing and postage costs. In fact, they almost eliminate these costs entirely. With email, you can send an invoice instantly, which is received instantly by your recipient. Emails can’t get lost in the trash, eaten by the recipient’s dog, or dropped in the wrong mail box by the postman. You can set your outgoing email to request a read receipt to ensure the person assigned to receive the invoice actually opens the email and acknowledges receipt of the invoice.
Email Invoices - Cons: Email, still to this day, faces 2 challenges that go well beyond email invoices. Email can be mistaken as spam or junk mail and deleted by the recipient’s email program before they even get to look at it. Second, Email faces a credibility problem. An invoice via email can be dismissed as nonsense by its recipient much easier than a standard mail invoice with an official company letterhead.
Which one should you choose? Well, in this economy (and in this technological era), you would be wise to choose the option with the least possible cost and the most time efficient delivery method. You might also want to consider the level of technical experience and overall preference of your clients who ultimately pay the invoices. One possible solution is to use a hybrid method based on your customers choice for invoicing delivery send a regular mail invoice for those customers who must have a printed invoice sent by mail. But send an email version as well, just as a back up to the printed version. In this way you accommodate your customer’s preference and at the same time get them used to receiving email versions of the invoice.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Abakoos Invoicing will no longer be available at http://www.abakoos.com. Please visit http://www.abakoosinvoicing.com
Current customers will have to update their company’s login page address as follows:
companyname.abakoos.com to companyname.abakoosinvoicing.com
If you are having difficulties locating your company’s new login page please use our login page finder at:
Thank you.
The Abakoos Team
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Scheduled Service Maintenance Has Been Completed
Abakoos Invoicing Schedule Service Maintenance has been successfully completed.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Thank you,
The Abakoos Team
Friday, August 20, 2010
Scheduled Service Maintenance
Abakoos Invoicing will be temporarily unavailable for a system upgrade. The site will be down for about 10 minutes, starting on Sunday 08/22/10 at 11:00 PM EDT (3:00 AM Monday morning, UTC)
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Thank you,
The Abakoos Team
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Regardless of how small or large your organization, you can use Abakoos Invoicing Software to meet all of your accounting and bookkeeping needs. But what if you have complex needs? Multiple contacts at the same client who expect separate invoices, different times of the month, or detailed tiered credit/debit memos? Will you run out to Intuit and purchase the latest version of QuickBooks? Hopefully you’ll realize that Abakoos Invoicing Software is very comparable to other well-known brands with a lower cost of running your business. Just because the invoicing project you are working on is challenging doesn’t mean you need to burden yourself further by spending more on invoicing software just because they have a brand name!
But we don’t want you to just take our word for it. We want to prove ourselves and our service to earn your business. Starting at just $18/month for our Premier program, you’ll be allowed to create unlimited invoices per month, have unlimited customers in your database, and set-up email alerts and reminders.
You’ll also have the ability to upload your own custom logo, which means Abakoos Invoicing Software is a white-label software package that can be made to look like it belongs at your company. Abakoos also offers its clients peace of mind with its secure SSL data encryption log-in system ‘only you and who you specify will be able to access your invoicing data’ no one else!
We’re pretty confident about our Invoicing Software, so here’s a deal just for you. Try our invoicing software for free and create up to three invoices per month. If you don’t like it, there are no strings attached, no contracts, and no hassle. But if you do like it ‘and we think you will’ then sign up for our Premier account and begin enjoying the freedom and flexibility that Abakoos Invoicing Software provides you!
