Sales Invoicing

Summary/Intro

Traditional manual invoicing processes are inefficient, time-consuming, and detrimental to cash flow. Cloud-accounting solutions can help automate and streamline the end-to-end process by reducing manual invoice creation and reconciliation.

Typical Problems

Sales and finance teams sometimes run independent accounting and CRM systems, with separate processes and data controls. Often these very manual processes lead to inaccuracies and data duplication, which in turn impacts invoice creation and cash flow.

If the organisation has multiple revenue streams across multiple countries, adding in complex multi-location team structures flowing into a central finance team; the data issues become exponential, with the effort and resources required to resolve and administer becoming equally substantial.

Labour-intense tasks such as process alterations, invoice layout adjustment, and updating bank details become frustrating and time-consuming as they require additional technical support and development.

Solutions

A true cloud-based solution will result in seamless integration between CRM and Finance systems across multiple entities giving absolute traceability, automation, and control for finance teams, no matter where they are based, from Lead to Ledger.

With cloud accounting solutions, quality gate controls, workflows, and limit approvals can be easily set up to ensure accuracy and internal process adherence before the invoice lands in the customer’s inbox.

Adjustments can be made to invoice templates and no longer require ‘IT’ support, while sales invoices can also be generated within multiple digital systems across than organisation without fear of duplication, errors, and complications from reconciliation.

Benefits/ROI
A fully integrated CRM and Finance system ensures traceability from the lead, through to the invoice to the eventual disposition of cash without manual intervention. Lead to Ledger. The whole business can be connected on one platform providing a real-time view and singular source of the truth at all stages. While the benefits of automation can be realised in this process with the reduction in lead time accelerating and improving cash flow.

References

Example integrations for invoicing might include:

• Salesforce CRM - automate invoices based on won sales opportunities
• Chargebee - Payment and billing solutions
• DocuSign – create invoices on contract signature
• Conga – Automated document generation.