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Read MoreIs Billomat’s Online Invoicing Service Any Good?
If you run your own business or work as a freelancer then you’ll be well aware of the headache of billing customers – it’s great that the work is coming in but things aren’t right when your admin work is taking up half your working week!
So when Billomat’s online billing service came along, it looked like the perfect solution to this problem, offering an easy way to invoice customers and keep track of payments – but is it actually any good? Let’s take a look…
The Problems With Invoicing
Asking for and collecting payments from customers can be a real headache at the best of times; whether it’s because a customer is disputing the invoice or has simply forgotten to pay it, the outcome is the same and you have the hassle of telephoning or sending letters to chase them up, often with varying degrees of success but always with a paper trail that could confuse even the most officious of HMRC officials.
However, if the whole thing is kept in order online, via an online invoicing service such as the one offered by Billomat, then this can take a lot of the hard work out of it and mean that you don’t have to go rummaging through old files to see who has and hasn’t paid up on time.
How Online Invoicing Works
One of the best things about online invoicing is that it is cloud based and so you don’t have to install or update any software on your local system and you can access your account anywhere that you can get an internet connection.
This means that you can invoice a customer immediately a job is completed and so don’t have to make a note of it and set aside a several hours a week to catch up on your admin work.
And because it is not a desktop service, all updates to the service are carried out without any disruption to the service and without you having to go through the hassle of downloading and installing updates.
When you log in to your account you are faced with four tabe; a dashboard that shows all pending and overdue invoices, a graph highlighting payment details and frequency, an articles section where you can create and save articles to be used at any time and the all important documents section that details invoices, estimates, confirmations, notes and reminders.
This allows you to manage all invoices and payments easily and you can add and search for multiple customers by importing vCard or CSV files.
Is Online Invoicing Secure?
A common misconception – or fear – that people have about cloud based services is that they’re not secure, but this could not be further from the truth when it comes to Billomat’s online invoicing.
Once you have created an account it can only be accessed by you or anyone you have authorised to access the account – not even Billomat staff can view your details without your consent.
All data is encrypted in secured socket layer (SSL) form and security systems are regularly updated, and your data regularly backed up, so you can be sure that everything is safe.
Is Online Invoicing Any Good?
Online invoicing could literally save you hours of your time each week by taking a lot of the hassle out of creating and sending invoices.
The Billomat interface is very intuitive and all customer data and invoice details can be accessed in just a few clicks. In addition, you can recall and amend any old invoices to send to customers and these can be sent via email (including digital signature), fax or printed off to post if you so wish.
If you have any international clients then the program is available in five different languages.
So, is online invoicing any good? In a word, yes!
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