Not only in the way we manage our personal life, but it has transformed the way we do business. That said, with all the progress we’ve made over the years, there are still pest control companies that rely on manual invoicing. In this study from the Aberdeen Group, 42% of those surveyed indicated “automation as a key step to improving financial management.” If you’re manually processing your invoices, then you’re likely familiar with these pain points:
Have you thought about the sheer cost of using paper? According to this article, one four-drawer filing cabinet costs $25,000 to fill and $2,000 to maintain each year, and employees working with paper spend 50% of their time looking for information. In addition to being expensive and inconvenient, it gets messy. No one wants to walk into work every morning with stacks of paper on their desk. If this describes your current working environment, then it’s inevitable invoices have gotten lost in the shuffle. Which means you’re losing money because you won’t get paid.
Even the best employees can make mistakes. And no matter how careful you are, mistakes get made when you manually enter data across multiple platforms to process your invoices. Errors from missing or incorrect information on invoices will delay payments. Automatic invoicing reduces the margin for error, so you get paid faster.
Manual processes involve humans, so it should come as no surprise that there is a human labor cost associated with sending a paper invoice. You need to pay someone to print the invoices, stamp, and stuff the envelopes. This article from CFO.com discusses the cost of the accounts payable process, “The need for manual intervention is the main culprit. Labor costs typically consume 62% of total AP costs, according to the APQC research.” With an automated AP system, you can reduce headcount and labor costs.
With snail mail, it’s easy for your invoice to arrive late or, at worst, never delivered. That means your customers are paying late or not at all, and you’ll just keep falling farther behind on getting invoices processed. If you don’t get paid, your vendors don’t get paid, and worse still, your employees don’t get paid.
In the end, automating your invoicing process helps eliminate paper, errors, and will save you money in the long run. It provides the oversight and controls you need to help run your pest control business smoothly so you can focus on what matters – growth.
