Business Management 101: Making Sure You Get Paid - part 2

An accountant may also recommend diversifying your payment methods to help accommodate a wider range of clients. This means opening the doors to eChecks, mobile apps, email invoicing, credit cards, and recurrent payments. By moving things to a digital space, you’ll find your cash flow improves as well; after all, online payments are usually carried out in real-time.

Chasing Up
Cash flow is crucial to the long-term survival of any company. In the event that a client or customer isn’t paying on time, you’ll need a plan of action to chase them up. From the outset, you’ll need to be certain that you have outlined any payment terms and conditions. This means specifying the number of days and whether or not any cost must be paid upfront. It’s also here that you should also disclose any interest charges invoked on late payments. Perhaps you should send multiple copies of contracts to customers to make sure they have it, which will keep everybody on the same page when it comes to payment schedules. Be sure to provide a hard copy as well as a digital copy; you can use tools like Adobe Acrobat to compress PDF files to make them easier to email.
It’s important to remember that it’s not bad etiquette to chase up payments. It may even be useful to send reminders closer to the time just make sure that you write these using guidelines and at a time removed from the moment. If these still don’t work, it can be worth sending a statement of outstanding cost or even calling the client directly. These steps, whilst not common, are sometimes necessary.

Getting paid can be a pain, but if you take the right precautions, it will certainly be less painful. Remember to always seek the right help, learn the current software, and don’t be afraid to follow up on late customers.