Our friends at US Bank have some tips for staying organized when accepting credit card payments. This month we summarize their advice for business owners.
Running a business is hard – there are a lot of balls to juggle, even if you’re not a clown! You’re likely dealing with inventory, accounts payable, accounts receivable, employees, managing vendors and suppliers and countless other duties. When all these things are running smoothly, you’re operating like a well-oiled machine. However, we all know the squeaky wheels show up and demand attention.
At Altor, we know that having good control over your business processes starts with finances. And nothing helps a business more (or faster) than having an invoice workflow strategy, ideally leveraging your point of sale (POS) system and credit card processing.
Here are a few tips to make your business more efficient and smooth out any kinks:
Data is knowledge, and in business, knowledge is power
Your business takes in a lot of data during the course of a typical day. How are you using it? Is it valuable? The reality is all of it is likely valuable at some point, but keeping it organized, sorted and accessible is daunting. That’s where a POS system can help – the right tool can keep track of invoices, immediately update inventory data and provide automatic updates to your sales ledger, letting you focus on generating sales, not the administration of getting data into the correct system.
By having data streamlined and accessible, you can quickly spot sales or inventory trends, or identify cash-flow concerns and slow payments.
Use invoicing tools that support your business processes
Invoicing is the lifeblood for many businesses, and the right software easily integrates with your POS system, making it easier to combine invoicing with other tasks in your business processes. Here are a few things to consider to streamline invoicing:
- A system that sends out auto-reminders on outstanding payments.
- Accepting web-based credit card payments.
- Advanced invoice search functions that tie into your POS sales and inventory data.
- Exporting data into an easy-to-read spreadsheets.
- Viewing and managing inventory with only a few mouse clicks.
Many of these features also offer your customers flexibility in receiving and paying invoices in ways that best align with their needs.
Leverage POS functions with invoicing to deepen customer relationships
Other features put your customers in control – giving them an element of self-service or making it easy to change how they interact with your business. Considerations in a POS include:
- Requesting paperless invoicing via email.
- Making requests to modify or cancel an invoice from within the invoice.
- Receiving automated reminders of payment to help keep account statuses healthy.
- Being notified of when the merchant makes a change to an invoice.
- Requesting to return items for full or partial refunds easily.
Using these, and similar, invoicing features within your standard business practices will help build customer trust and goodwill. Customers like having complete transparency for how their orders are processed.
Adding a cutting-edge invoice and data management workflow to your business processes and integrating this into the newest POS technology can be a game-changer. The right technology can save you time, and make you more money. If you’re not sure what POS is right for your business, contact the Altor team to find a solution that optimizes more than credit card processing.
