In a perfect world, every customer would pay their invoice right away. You’d create an invoice for your customer using QuickBooks…and before you know it, you’d receive a payment notification.
Of course, SMBs don’t live in a perfect world. Instead, many customers fail to pay invoices upon receipt. In fact, it’s not uncommon for invoices to go 30, 60, or 90 days past due. As a result, you’ll find yourself needing to follow up with your customers in order to ensure that invoices get paid — and this often takes the form of email invoice reminders.
Automatic invoice email reminders help the small business owner.
Creating email reminders and then automating them can help you do your day-to-day business operations and leave your focus on your work and customers.
No uncomfortable conversations with customers and clients to talk about invoice payments. Chasing and asking for payments is one of aspects small business owners hate to do. Automatic emails do this work for you. It becomes a standard business practice and customers start to anticipate it. The chances are they will respond better to pay.
Cost and time savings: Automating the invoice reminder process can free up hours of your time, leading to cost savings in the long run. And as the saying goes, “time is money.”
Cash flow: many times small business owners front the cost for services, supplies, inventory, and products. When your customer does not pay to reimburse these expenses on time, you are left holding the bag. It limits your ability to conduct your payables. Your cash flow is extended and now you don’t have money in the bank. You can’t even think about investing in your business’ growth.
While QuickBooks Online does allow you to send email invoice reminders manually (QuickBooks Desktop doesn’t offer this functionality), doing so requires a lot of legwork on your end. When you have dozens (or hundreds) of outstanding invoices, sending manual reminders to clients on an ongoing basis can turn into many hours of monotonous work.
The QuickBooks Online Apps integration solution.
Another asset to using QuickBooks Online is their app integrations offerings that can provide more robust features for businesses to use, including automatic email reminders that follow invoices.
Biller Genie is one of these app integration solutions. Among its features for small business owners who the wish to streamline their payment receivables process are automatic email reminders set-up.
Start using automatic email invoice reminders.
To get started, you’ll need to sign in to your Biller Genie account. (If you don’t have an account with Biller Genie, you can sign up for one here. It’s free!)
Once you’re logged in, click on the Tools menu on the left side of your screen. Under Tools, select Configure Reminders.
Biller Genie’s Reminders functionality is central to what Biller Genie offers. With Reminders, you can configure customized messaging for new invoices, invoice updates, paid invoice notifications, upcoming payments, payment due notifications, and past due notices.
No more calendar reminders to follow up on invoices.
Here, we’ll focus on configuring Upcoming Payment, Payment Due, and Payment Overdue reminders.
Upcoming Payments
First, scroll down to Upcoming Payment and Payment Due on the Reminders screen. Click on the drop down arrow on the right side of the Upcoming Payment bar, and you’ll see the Upcoming Payment email configuration options.
Think of the Upcoming Payment notification as a gentle nudge to remind your customers of an upcoming payment. If you’re on a net 60 payment cycle, you might set up an Upcoming Payment reminder 10 days in advance of the payment due date.
You can configure the number of days before the due date that a Upcoming Payment reminder is sent, as well as the email message associated with the reminder. Notice that the email preview on the right side of your screen displays your custom branding, as well as a yellow bar below your logo. This signals to your customers that they need to slow down and take notice of an upcoming payment due date. Click Save to save any changes that you’ve made to your email messaging or notification settings.
Payment Due
Now, do the same thing for Payment Due. Click the drop down arrow, configure your messaging, and click Save. Biller Genie’s Payment Due feature is incredibly helpful for SMBs that offer payment terms. Biller Genie will automatically follow up with your customers via email on an invoice’s due date.
Finally, be sure that both the Upcoming Payment and Payment Due notification are set to On. If they’re not, click the On/Off button to the right of each.
Payment Overdue and Late Fees
Biller Genie also offers the ability to send Payment Overdue notices and assess late fees on overdue invoices. With Biller Genie’s Payment Overdue functionality, you can configure custom escalation messaging to accompany invoices that remain unpaid for extended periods of time. Plus, it’s easy to set up recurring Payment Overdue notifications to remind customers of their outstanding obligation.
If you’d like to enable this functionality, simply click the Payment Overdue drop down arrow, customize your email messaging and late fee settings, and ensure that Payment Overdue is set to On.
Get Started with Biller Genie Today
That’s it! You’ve successfully configured automatic payment reminders using the Biller Genie QuickBooks Intuit Online App. If you’ve synced your QuickBooks Online account with your Biller Genie account (one step to do!), your customers will now receive automatic email invoice reminders for any upcoming, unpaid QuickBooks Online invoices. And if you’ve opted to enable Payment Overdue notifications, customers with overdue invoices will receive email notifications as well.
Get paid easier and faster.
At the end of the day, Biller Genie’s automated reminder functionality means that you’ll get paid faster — and without the work of manually following up on unpaid invoices.
Remember: Biller Genie is free to use! Don’t have an account? Click here to sign up now.
