Electronic billing (or E-billing for short) has been in the news a lot in recent years and has been widely introduced in bigger businesses like large utilities, telcos and even council organisations. But many small to medium sized enterprises (and quite a few larger ones) are still not convinced about the overall benefits and take the attitude that their existing approach is fine as it is-taking the view that “if it isn’t broken, then why mess with it?” While this may have been a reasonably tenable position two or three years ago, with faster connection speeds, increased use of the Internet by the general population and more and more ways to get on line now, the reasons to care about e-billing have become a lot more compelling. Let’s therefore look at the main reasons why every organisation (no matter what their size or business activity) should now take this very seriously:
1. First and foremost the use of full e-billing (and not just going to the half-way step of sending out an invoice by email attachment) can save a huge amount of money for an organisation (and for its consumers too). Research suggests that an average cost of sending each bill (and getting it paid) is as much as £15.00. E-billing can reduce this by as much as 65%, or to as little as £5.00 per bill-that can be a lot of money saved if you are sending out hundreds or thousands of bills each year.
2. It is much more convenient, fast, and easy to bill or invoice people on-line. There’s far less preparation time for a bill or statement to be sent or to arrive in the physical mail and any bill recipient can view his or her bill from the comfort of their home (or indeed from any location worldwide).
3. Even more beneficial is that an e-bill is accessible by customers 24/7 (and 365 days of the year) and thereby allows bill recipients to log on any time of the day or night to view the account and pay online.
4. With an e-bill (or what is perhaps better described as a full “digital” bill) there is often a multitude of immediate ways to pay or settle the bill while on-line. This means that with just a few clicks a bill can be paid by credit, debit, cash or other options, with no need for the recipient to have to write out cheques, post off a payment or have to go to an approved outlet (like a post office) to make a payment in person.
5. Research consistently suggests that customers pay e-bills 20-25% quicker than those sent by physical mail (thus helping to improve overall cash-flow).
6. An e-bill is very flexible in terms of storage and retrieval (saving data for longer and much more cost effectively). Sending organisations and recipients can save all bills/invoices on a good system (such as at www.payswyft.com). This means that all sorts of subsequent analysis can then be carried out. For the consumer this may be patterns of consumption or spending on different bills, and for an organisation it may be patterns of payment methods or relative time taken to open and pay a bill, for example.
7. Because e-bills are stored on-line as digital records, the data can easily be uploaded and downloaded as desired. This makes for easy transfer to and from spreadsheets and accounting systems. Perhaps more critically, this makes reconciliation considerably easier (cutting the need for expensive manual processes by a much as 80% and driving a large part of the savings in point 1).
8. Last but not least, E-billing allows the electronic bill recipient to reduce paper usage, which is naturally much friendlier to the environment.
Every one of the above ultimately can potentially create a much more user-friendly process to send a bill and get it paid for both the organisation and its customers. For this reason, e-billing should now be a key strategy for every business.
Sunday 26 December 2010
Wednesday 1 December 2010
How do you get customers to adopt/accept e-billing/digital billing?
A large-scale recent survey by the international ecommerce/payments research firm Forrester reports that over 70% of consumers are prepared to replace their paper bills with an on-line solution. However, customers will not take the initiative to do this and instead expect merchants to guide them on the process and show them how this will benefit them. If they do this well, the prize is that the merchant may even be able to turn off paper invoices or statements completely (and save a significant amount of money in doing so-often as much as 2-3% of revenue can be the result). So how does any merchant set about influencing their customers to adopt digital billing? Let’s look at the 5 main actions that seem to have the greatest impact:
1. Strongly market the message
When a good digital solution (such as www.Payswyft.com for instance) has been added to existing more traditional payment channels (a process which typically takes only a few hours to do) the next step is to tell customers that they can view their bills on-line and that they should go to the relevant web site to see how simple this can be for them. However, telling customers once will not be enough. Customer need to be given the message multiple times and in a variety of ways. This could include sending out a “prompting” notice on physical invoices, sending an email, a special e-newsletter, a flyer etc. It could even include putting a special message on your merchant web site or describing the new digital billing system verbally when customers are on hold when calling in by phone. With a variety of communication channels and frequent messages, customers will start to try out what you have to offer.
2. Make it easy and user-friendly
Any digital billing solution need to be easy to use and avoid confusing a customer. This usually means that the process of finding the site, logging in (or being able to pay instantly), viewing a bill and paying needs to be simple in design. It also requires the steps involved to be user-friendly (involving clear screen pages, minimum fields to fill in and as few clicks between screens as possible). The more customers come to realise that the experience is relatively straight-forward, the more comfortable they become.
3. Stress the convenience and time saving benefits
Although it may seem obvious, the convenience of using a digital billing solution needs particular emphasis. This means communicating particular benefits like it being a free and safe/secure service or one which can be done in the convenience of the home, for example. In addition, potential time and hassle avoided can be stressed by pointing out that digital bills can be dealt with quickly and the records saved in the system for later tracking or reference as needed. In a well-designed digital billing system the benefits of email/SMS alerts or reminders can also be very attractive to many customers as can the availability of many different kinds of payment options.
4. Emphasise “green” benefits.
Almost all consumers now appreciate the benefits of being more environmentally friendly, and digital billing is a great way to be “greener” (saving not only paper bills and envelopes but the added carbon-footprint of having to physically deliver them and dispose of the paper ultimately in landfill). This will only happen when the customer agrees to turn off paper billing completely but they will be happy to do this once they gain confidence in the process and start to experience the benefits described above.
5. Offer incentives.
In the early stages, your “pioneer” and “early adopter” customers may have experimented with digital billing and even adopted it quite happily. However, this may be only 10-15% of your customer population and you therefore now need to get the wider majority to try it. Incentives are the best way to make this happen and this can take a range of forms. These can include incentives such as money off a bill, particularly designed or special merchandise or offering spendable credits/points, for example. However, don’t forget, it can also include disincentives such as proposing a date after which consumers will need to pay extra for a paper bill to be sent in the post.
Summary
Electronic or digital billing can represent a cheaper, greener and more convenient way to handle bills for consumers and create significant cost-reduction and administrative benefits (time and resources) for merchants-a true “win/win” situation. However, getting as many consumers as possible to transition to e-bills needs careful planning and as many of the above actions to be adopted as possible in order to get consumers to become aware of the possibilities, pilot the approach and finally adopt the process.
1. Strongly market the message
When a good digital solution (such as www.Payswyft.com for instance) has been added to existing more traditional payment channels (a process which typically takes only a few hours to do) the next step is to tell customers that they can view their bills on-line and that they should go to the relevant web site to see how simple this can be for them. However, telling customers once will not be enough. Customer need to be given the message multiple times and in a variety of ways. This could include sending out a “prompting” notice on physical invoices, sending an email, a special e-newsletter, a flyer etc. It could even include putting a special message on your merchant web site or describing the new digital billing system verbally when customers are on hold when calling in by phone. With a variety of communication channels and frequent messages, customers will start to try out what you have to offer.
2. Make it easy and user-friendly
Any digital billing solution need to be easy to use and avoid confusing a customer. This usually means that the process of finding the site, logging in (or being able to pay instantly), viewing a bill and paying needs to be simple in design. It also requires the steps involved to be user-friendly (involving clear screen pages, minimum fields to fill in and as few clicks between screens as possible). The more customers come to realise that the experience is relatively straight-forward, the more comfortable they become.
3. Stress the convenience and time saving benefits
Although it may seem obvious, the convenience of using a digital billing solution needs particular emphasis. This means communicating particular benefits like it being a free and safe/secure service or one which can be done in the convenience of the home, for example. In addition, potential time and hassle avoided can be stressed by pointing out that digital bills can be dealt with quickly and the records saved in the system for later tracking or reference as needed. In a well-designed digital billing system the benefits of email/SMS alerts or reminders can also be very attractive to many customers as can the availability of many different kinds of payment options.
4. Emphasise “green” benefits.
Almost all consumers now appreciate the benefits of being more environmentally friendly, and digital billing is a great way to be “greener” (saving not only paper bills and envelopes but the added carbon-footprint of having to physically deliver them and dispose of the paper ultimately in landfill). This will only happen when the customer agrees to turn off paper billing completely but they will be happy to do this once they gain confidence in the process and start to experience the benefits described above.
5. Offer incentives.
In the early stages, your “pioneer” and “early adopter” customers may have experimented with digital billing and even adopted it quite happily. However, this may be only 10-15% of your customer population and you therefore now need to get the wider majority to try it. Incentives are the best way to make this happen and this can take a range of forms. These can include incentives such as money off a bill, particularly designed or special merchandise or offering spendable credits/points, for example. However, don’t forget, it can also include disincentives such as proposing a date after which consumers will need to pay extra for a paper bill to be sent in the post.
Summary
Electronic or digital billing can represent a cheaper, greener and more convenient way to handle bills for consumers and create significant cost-reduction and administrative benefits (time and resources) for merchants-a true “win/win” situation. However, getting as many consumers as possible to transition to e-bills needs careful planning and as many of the above actions to be adopted as possible in order to get consumers to become aware of the possibilities, pilot the approach and finally adopt the process.
Monday 22 November 2010
Overcoming the Barriers to adopting e-billing/invoicing
If you put the term “e-billing” into the Google search engine, almost 10 million results are returned and articles and items stretch back for over 10 years since people began talking about the topic in earnest. But adoption rates have been slow and very few companies have taken the plunge. When asked why, most companies say that there are too many barriers to overcome and they are therefore still waiting for better options. So what are these barriers and are there any ways in which to overcome them? When you analyse the most often mentioned obstacles or barriers, 5 seem to emerge as the most significant. Let’s look at each of these in turn:
1. Too many people don’t have or don’t use the Internet
While this was true 10 years ago and partially true even 5 years ago, it is largely not true today. Over 23 million people in the UK now have access to the Internet and over half of these have broad band access. Furthermore, 2 in every 3 adults in the age range 18-65 now log regularly into an Internet bank account to perform a variety of transactions. With ready access to on-line banking sites via smart phones, this number will quickly increase further.
2. Customers won’t like it
Customers are notoriously slow to accept change and will usually only do so if they have compelling reasons to do so. Almost 100% of possible customers famously rejected using ATM machines when it was introduced as a concept over 20 years ago, and yet there are now 60,000 of them in the UK (1 for every 1000 people in the population). In addition it has become the most popular and convenient way to not only get money but to perform other financial transactions. This turnaround was achieved with ATMs by making the whole experience simple or straightforward. Hence, the “trick” for e-billing adoption is to make it as easy as possible for customers to use it-this means that the approach should be user-friendly, fast (only a few clicks) convenient and safe-an issue we will look at next.
3. Accepting on-line payments is not safe or secure enough
This is a serious concern and one which is much discussed on Internet blogs and elsewhere (especially when people have bad experiences). Research suggests that 25% of people do not like using their credit cards on line as a result of safety and security concerns. However, apart from the 75% who clearly are, the credit card companies have done much to improve on-line systems in the last couple of years, with “3D-secure” technology being one of the most significant. In addition, good e-billing and payment sites do not require credit card detail storing and therefore provide an “instant pay” option. This allows customers to make a 3D-secure based credit or debit payment as many times as they like until they feel more comfortable to register (and even then, only do so at a site that provides a login/password/anti-login robot process)
4. It’s too disruptive to existing billing practices/processes
The entire billing and payment system can involve quite a lot of people and processes so its easy to feel that the effort to change can be quite time consuming at least and very disruptive in some cases. However, once again, it depends what solution you decide to bring in. Many full digital billing solutions (such as www.payswyft.com) operate as an adjunct payment channel to existing processes. The beauty of this approach is that an organisation can offer its customers a full ebilling experience without necessarily changing very much at all in the short term. Customers are merely told (on either their physical bill or on the company web site for example) that they can pay on-line and can do so easily. At a later stage, as people and processes are ready, the organisation can then more strongly incentivise the customer to use the on-line system and use the savings to fund process changes and the re-purposing of people’s time (as effort is saved on older practices).
5. The software integration is too difficult or complex
While occasionally true this is often an excuse to “leave things as they are” and in reality, once gain, really depends on what solution you decide to bring in. It is true that many software based solutions require quite a lot of work to integrate the e-billing software with the internal accounting system (which may be quite a difficult task at times). However, the best and easiest solution is to use a third party portal (again such as PaySwyft) which allows invoices to be easily uploaded to the site (in bulk at one go) and then be paid by a variety of means in just a few clicks). Such sites allow API uploads straight from accounting software packages and will allow easy reconciliation back to receivable files (saving huge amounts of time and effort).
Summary
E-Billing and payment is the way of the future but many organisations feel that adopting it may take a lot of time and effort. However, as we have seen above, by adopting a full digital solution with a sophisticated third-party portal, the whole process can be made quite simple and involve very little time and effort. As a result, any organisation, no matter how small or large, could be e-billing successfully within just a few days of deciding to offer it (and be saving lots of time, hassle and money in doing so).
1. Too many people don’t have or don’t use the Internet
While this was true 10 years ago and partially true even 5 years ago, it is largely not true today. Over 23 million people in the UK now have access to the Internet and over half of these have broad band access. Furthermore, 2 in every 3 adults in the age range 18-65 now log regularly into an Internet bank account to perform a variety of transactions. With ready access to on-line banking sites via smart phones, this number will quickly increase further.
2. Customers won’t like it
Customers are notoriously slow to accept change and will usually only do so if they have compelling reasons to do so. Almost 100% of possible customers famously rejected using ATM machines when it was introduced as a concept over 20 years ago, and yet there are now 60,000 of them in the UK (1 for every 1000 people in the population). In addition it has become the most popular and convenient way to not only get money but to perform other financial transactions. This turnaround was achieved with ATMs by making the whole experience simple or straightforward. Hence, the “trick” for e-billing adoption is to make it as easy as possible for customers to use it-this means that the approach should be user-friendly, fast (only a few clicks) convenient and safe-an issue we will look at next.
3. Accepting on-line payments is not safe or secure enough
This is a serious concern and one which is much discussed on Internet blogs and elsewhere (especially when people have bad experiences). Research suggests that 25% of people do not like using their credit cards on line as a result of safety and security concerns. However, apart from the 75% who clearly are, the credit card companies have done much to improve on-line systems in the last couple of years, with “3D-secure” technology being one of the most significant. In addition, good e-billing and payment sites do not require credit card detail storing and therefore provide an “instant pay” option. This allows customers to make a 3D-secure based credit or debit payment as many times as they like until they feel more comfortable to register (and even then, only do so at a site that provides a login/password/anti-login robot process)
4. It’s too disruptive to existing billing practices/processes
The entire billing and payment system can involve quite a lot of people and processes so its easy to feel that the effort to change can be quite time consuming at least and very disruptive in some cases. However, once again, it depends what solution you decide to bring in. Many full digital billing solutions (such as www.payswyft.com) operate as an adjunct payment channel to existing processes. The beauty of this approach is that an organisation can offer its customers a full ebilling experience without necessarily changing very much at all in the short term. Customers are merely told (on either their physical bill or on the company web site for example) that they can pay on-line and can do so easily. At a later stage, as people and processes are ready, the organisation can then more strongly incentivise the customer to use the on-line system and use the savings to fund process changes and the re-purposing of people’s time (as effort is saved on older practices).
5. The software integration is too difficult or complex
While occasionally true this is often an excuse to “leave things as they are” and in reality, once gain, really depends on what solution you decide to bring in. It is true that many software based solutions require quite a lot of work to integrate the e-billing software with the internal accounting system (which may be quite a difficult task at times). However, the best and easiest solution is to use a third party portal (again such as PaySwyft) which allows invoices to be easily uploaded to the site (in bulk at one go) and then be paid by a variety of means in just a few clicks). Such sites allow API uploads straight from accounting software packages and will allow easy reconciliation back to receivable files (saving huge amounts of time and effort).
Summary
E-Billing and payment is the way of the future but many organisations feel that adopting it may take a lot of time and effort. However, as we have seen above, by adopting a full digital solution with a sophisticated third-party portal, the whole process can be made quite simple and involve very little time and effort. As a result, any organisation, no matter how small or large, could be e-billing successfully within just a few days of deciding to offer it (and be saving lots of time, hassle and money in doing so).
Tuesday 16 November 2010
What is the real cost of paper versus electronic billing or invoicing?
This might seem to be quite a simple question at face value but when we think about it, the answer is not exactly a straightforward one. This is because we are not always aware of the real costs of performing this quite complex task in all of its steps. In addition, while direct or tangible costs are relatively easy to identify, indirect costs are less easily identifiable and some of these are often very well hidden. Let’s therefore look at what tends to fall into these three categories of costs when comparing traditional paper-based billing versus full on-line or digital billing.
Direct Costs
At face value most people would estimate that a few “direct” costs are involved in paper-based billing. These may include:
•Invoice bill/file preparation/printing
•Paper invoices/bills
•Printing (ink or cartridge replacement)
•Envelopes
•Postage/Franking
•Offering basic payment options (debit, credit, other at standard fees)
Costs will fall as bill volumes increase for most of the above but even if they do postage or franking at about £0.40 to £0.45 pence will always be the biggest fee here. And the others will typically add as much as 30 to 35 pence making for a total of £0.70 to £0.80 of direct costs. Of course, if a merchant emails invoices (with a PDF attachment), instead of physically mailing them this may fall in half perhaps.
Indirect Costs
Costs are often deemed to be “indirect” because they are either fixed and/or cannot be wholly charged to the billing costs (especially if it is only part of a person’s job). However, even proportional costs add up here. Indirect costs may include:
•Customer service manpower to handle calls/queries
•Accounting/Reconciliation manpower
•Lost invoices (and the time taken to deal with this)
•Undelivered bills (and the time taken to deal with this)
•The cost of bill storage (space rental or fixed costs)
•Bill query handling time
Once again there may be some economies of scale in the above but all of these items (except bill storage perhaps) mainly involve having staff on the payroll or at call. Even at 500 bills a month, at least quarter a person would typically be involved in issuing and reconciling invoices and another quarter in handling queries, re-issuing bills or handling “special requests” related to invoicing or payments. If the cost of this person (or two part-timers) were £12,000 a year (£8,000 plus 50% salary/overhead burden) or £6,000 each, this £1,000 a month would amount to £2 per bill.
Hidden Costs
Costs are often deemed to be “hidden” because no-one is scrutinising or controlling them (they go unmeasured or unaccounted for or are lost in general overhead or the broad costs of doing business). Hidden costs may include:
•Extra or hidden payment transaction fees (which may be fixed or higher than necessary)
•Invoice/billing run or payment processing errors
•The need for a higher than wanted or necessary float/overdraft at the bank
•Possible added customers or more business from having more payment options
•Quicker settlement/cycle time (by use of SMS or email alerts)
•Easier training of staff/opportunity to focus staff elsewhere with time saved
•Potential cash-flow acceleration
•Easier/cheaper compliance and audit work with digital billing
•Lower/No cost digital marketing opportunities
•Overall incremental "Green" benefits/credits
The benefits to an organisation of the long list above are obviously much harder to calculate but a variety of studies in recent years have suggested that these can conservatively add up to as much as 3% of revenues or as much as 15% of profit. If we assume our little company doing 500 bills a month has an average transaction or “ticket” value of £40, turnover per month is £20,000 or £240,000 per annum. If we assume that profit is 15% of this or £36,000, this all means that the cost per bill is somewhere between £0.90 to £1.20.
So in summary, if we add all of these costs together which have a total traditional or paper-based billing cost of £3.60 to £4 or 9.5% of the revenue collected each time (£40 average ticket value). Now that’s a quite a serious amount of money for this little company not to take pretty seriously! But what about your company?-what is 9.5% of your revenues? And when you have calculated it in cold hard cash, can you afford not to investigate the potential to save as much as half of this as recurrent savings every year by moving to digital billing?
Direct Costs
At face value most people would estimate that a few “direct” costs are involved in paper-based billing. These may include:
•Invoice bill/file preparation/printing
•Paper invoices/bills
•Printing (ink or cartridge replacement)
•Envelopes
•Postage/Franking
•Offering basic payment options (debit, credit, other at standard fees)
Costs will fall as bill volumes increase for most of the above but even if they do postage or franking at about £0.40 to £0.45 pence will always be the biggest fee here. And the others will typically add as much as 30 to 35 pence making for a total of £0.70 to £0.80 of direct costs. Of course, if a merchant emails invoices (with a PDF attachment), instead of physically mailing them this may fall in half perhaps.
Indirect Costs
Costs are often deemed to be “indirect” because they are either fixed and/or cannot be wholly charged to the billing costs (especially if it is only part of a person’s job). However, even proportional costs add up here. Indirect costs may include:
•Customer service manpower to handle calls/queries
•Accounting/Reconciliation manpower
•Lost invoices (and the time taken to deal with this)
•Undelivered bills (and the time taken to deal with this)
•The cost of bill storage (space rental or fixed costs)
•Bill query handling time
Once again there may be some economies of scale in the above but all of these items (except bill storage perhaps) mainly involve having staff on the payroll or at call. Even at 500 bills a month, at least quarter a person would typically be involved in issuing and reconciling invoices and another quarter in handling queries, re-issuing bills or handling “special requests” related to invoicing or payments. If the cost of this person (or two part-timers) were £12,000 a year (£8,000 plus 50% salary/overhead burden) or £6,000 each, this £1,000 a month would amount to £2 per bill.
Hidden Costs
Costs are often deemed to be “hidden” because no-one is scrutinising or controlling them (they go unmeasured or unaccounted for or are lost in general overhead or the broad costs of doing business). Hidden costs may include:
•Extra or hidden payment transaction fees (which may be fixed or higher than necessary)
•Invoice/billing run or payment processing errors
•The need for a higher than wanted or necessary float/overdraft at the bank
•Possible added customers or more business from having more payment options
•Quicker settlement/cycle time (by use of SMS or email alerts)
•Easier training of staff/opportunity to focus staff elsewhere with time saved
•Potential cash-flow acceleration
•Easier/cheaper compliance and audit work with digital billing
•Lower/No cost digital marketing opportunities
•Overall incremental "Green" benefits/credits
The benefits to an organisation of the long list above are obviously much harder to calculate but a variety of studies in recent years have suggested that these can conservatively add up to as much as 3% of revenues or as much as 15% of profit. If we assume our little company doing 500 bills a month has an average transaction or “ticket” value of £40, turnover per month is £20,000 or £240,000 per annum. If we assume that profit is 15% of this or £36,000, this all means that the cost per bill is somewhere between £0.90 to £1.20.
So in summary, if we add all of these costs together which have a total traditional or paper-based billing cost of £3.60 to £4 or 9.5% of the revenue collected each time (£40 average ticket value). Now that’s a quite a serious amount of money for this little company not to take pretty seriously! But what about your company?-what is 9.5% of your revenues? And when you have calculated it in cold hard cash, can you afford not to investigate the potential to save as much as half of this as recurrent savings every year by moving to digital billing?
Sunday 14 November 2010
What is e-billing?
Lots of people are talking about the convenience of e-billing but are they all talking about the same thing when they do?
In traditional "off-line" billing or invoicing, a paper invoice is generated either by writing it out in long-hand, typing it into a word processing or spreadsheet package or perhaps generating it via an accounting software system of some kind. The problem with this approach is that it is time-consuming and typically costs a lot more than sending out the same invoice via the web.
Sending out an invoice as an attachment to an email is often called e-billing but is really not much different to sending out a paper invoice in many ways. There are obviously a few advantages to doing this (not least is saving the paper, envelope and the stamp, as well as perhaps speeding up the process of getting the invoice to a customer). However, there are still some problems with this approach. The main ones are that we may not always be sure that our invoice has got to the right person, or to the person who has the ability to pay it. It is also usually just a "static" document that commonly gets printed out and then treated in the same way as a paper invoice. Even at the mechant end, the email may need a PDF attachment which has to be printed to be kept in a physical file and is still needed for later reconciliation (a nightmare if you are sending out a lot of invoices each month). This is therefore not really a full e-billing solution.
A full and proper e-billing approach is often called a "digital" bill or invoice. In this instance, a bill is made available in a fully interative way in website portal so that the recipent can click on the bill (after viewing it in summary or detail form)in order to pay it (and then save it electronically if he or she wishes). Apart from the benefits of potentially avoiding the need for paper and saving the stamp, and being very quick and cost effective to deliver, the added advantage here is that the bill can be readily sent on-line to multiple people (including those particular individuals with the ability to pay it). In addition there is a full audit trail and reconciliation is made easy for both the payee and the merchant who sent the bill or invoice.
In traditional "off-line" billing or invoicing, a paper invoice is generated either by writing it out in long-hand, typing it into a word processing or spreadsheet package or perhaps generating it via an accounting software system of some kind. The problem with this approach is that it is time-consuming and typically costs a lot more than sending out the same invoice via the web.
Sending out an invoice as an attachment to an email is often called e-billing but is really not much different to sending out a paper invoice in many ways. There are obviously a few advantages to doing this (not least is saving the paper, envelope and the stamp, as well as perhaps speeding up the process of getting the invoice to a customer). However, there are still some problems with this approach. The main ones are that we may not always be sure that our invoice has got to the right person, or to the person who has the ability to pay it. It is also usually just a "static" document that commonly gets printed out and then treated in the same way as a paper invoice. Even at the mechant end, the email may need a PDF attachment which has to be printed to be kept in a physical file and is still needed for later reconciliation (a nightmare if you are sending out a lot of invoices each month). This is therefore not really a full e-billing solution.
A full and proper e-billing approach is often called a "digital" bill or invoice. In this instance, a bill is made available in a fully interative way in website portal so that the recipent can click on the bill (after viewing it in summary or detail form)in order to pay it (and then save it electronically if he or she wishes). Apart from the benefits of potentially avoiding the need for paper and saving the stamp, and being very quick and cost effective to deliver, the added advantage here is that the bill can be readily sent on-line to multiple people (including those particular individuals with the ability to pay it). In addition there is a full audit trail and reconciliation is made easy for both the payee and the merchant who sent the bill or invoice.
Welcome to E-Billing matters
This is a new blog but one that we hope that our followers will find invaluable over time. Each week (and sometimes more often) we will post a range of best practice information about on-line billing or payments or specific tips about how consumers and organisations or all sizes and types can improve overall efficiency and effectiveness in billing invoicing practices or in getting bills/invoices paid.
For the most part our blog postings will be highlighting a wide range of ways in which the phenomenon of the Internet can be used to gain substantial benefits for anyone who wants to invest a small amount of time and energy. While some of these benefits will involve savings in terms of time and hassle (and will therefore not always be tangible or easy to measure) in many cases the benefits will be related to the ability to save money directly-and in some cases the savings will be substantial.
We hope you enjoy our future blogs and look forward to hearing from our followers everywhere.
Hostgator alternative
For the most part our blog postings will be highlighting a wide range of ways in which the phenomenon of the Internet can be used to gain substantial benefits for anyone who wants to invest a small amount of time and energy. While some of these benefits will involve savings in terms of time and hassle (and will therefore not always be tangible or easy to measure) in many cases the benefits will be related to the ability to save money directly-and in some cases the savings will be substantial.
We hope you enjoy our future blogs and look forward to hearing from our followers everywhere.
Hostgator alternative
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