Sharon Vickery Blog

You’re not still chasing those outstanding invoices yourself, are you?

Well, are you?

Are you the creative type or a bit number dyslexic, unfortunately every business has to do accounts and a lot of business owners hate doing the job but it’s a great task to outsource to a Virtual Assistant – especially the job of chasing outstanding invoices.

 

Are you still running your accounts manually with spreadsheets? Or are you now using an online, cloud-based system? You have two great ones to choose from:

  • QuickBooks
  • Xero

Unfortunately looking after your accounts is a bit time-consuming but with being online can cut down on hours of work to just a few per month and this job often cuts into your family/leisure time or other work time where you could be earning some money instead. If you don’t keep on top of it, it can snowball into hours of work.

Keeping on top of the accounts is essential to manage your cashflow and this is something that a company has recently come to me to help with – look at the long outstanding invoices to chase up with a sympathetic email (I write this during the corona virus pandemic) so they can manage the cashflow going forward.

If you are still manual why don’t you get a Virtual Assistant involved to help you set up an online system, an excellent if you are not that computer confident. And set those payment terms!

So back to the topic of credit control and chasing up those long outstanding invoices, using a Virtual Assistant to help with this means you are working with someone who will adopt a detached and non-personal attitude which provides a buffer between you and your client.  Working with a confident, polite and professional manner, agree how you will provide the information that they need to carry out this task.

Before a call to a client of yours a Virtual Assistant will need to be equipped with the following:

  • Details of the invoice
  • Who they need to talk to?
  • What they need to say

You could provide this in a spreadsheet through Dropbox of a Google sheet so when one of you updates it can be seen by both and perhaps use a colour coded system.

A good Virtual Assistant will just keep it friendly and ask:

  1. Have they received the invoice?
  2. Compliment if they are usually quick payers
  3. Has it slipped through the net?
  4. Do they need the details to check the status of payment?

Results –

  • They have paid – get the reference and the date
  • It will be on the next run – get the date
  • No one available – message left and name of who to speak to
  • They will look into it – get a good time to be updated
  • Plead ignorance – resend invoice
  • Sound embarrassed or confused – make light of it and resend the invoice

The trick is to make one person accountable and let them know in a nice way that you will be following up.  Have you got the time and patience to do that?

No? Then why not outsource to a Virtual Assistant? Get on top of it and keep the Accountant happy!