With nearly every business transitioning key software to the cloud, now more than ever businesses are open to finding new ways to save time and improve performance. And in no category of work is that shift of higher interest than accounts receivable. With our new economic environment dictating that companies do more with less, accelerating accounts receivable with software and empowering accounting teams to focus on more strategic work, there’s a rush to put ordinarily tedious billing and collections tasks on autopilot.
In recent years, accounts receivable has surged as an area where CFOs, controllers and front line accountants are looking for solutions that reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to get paid—a best of both worlds combination that can both improve cash flow and save time.
Co-Founder & CEO of Invoiced
As a company that’s entirely focused on—and even passionate about—automating accounts receivable, Invoiced has emerged in recent years as a top vendor tackling the challenges businesses face every day in streamlining A/R.
We recently caught up with Jared King, Co-Founder & CEO of Invoiced to talk about what’s driving this trend and the before-and-after differences midsized and enterprise businesses are now starting to see by adopting accounts receivable automation—as well as some unique approaches Invoiced takes to make the whole process easy and effective for its clients.
Q: First and foremost, can you please share with us a brief overview of your company? When was Invoiced established and why did you enter this market?
A: I was inspired to start Invoiced in 2013 because in an earlier stage of my career as a technology consultant I found myself repeatedly being asked by clients to develop billing solutions. There were many point solutions for very basic billing already on the market, but most of them were geared toward very small businesses; it didn’t take long to realize there was a scarcity of cloud-based systems that met the needs of more complex businesses at a price point they could afford. So we started with a fairly simple invoicing app and over time added more and more capabilities by listening to customers; at a certain point our system reached complete coverage of the full accounts receivable lifecycle and we knew we were on to something big. Since then we’ve doubled our book of business several times over and have brought on many noteworthy clients including Uber, Sprint, Berkshire Hathaway and others.
Q: What industries do you serve and who are your current customers?
A: The only industry we don’t generally serve is retail. That’s because retailers generally utilize a POS or ecommerce system that gets them paid on the spot and many don’t send out invoices on credit terms. And while we’re a fairly horizontal solution, we do tend to see large concentrations of customers in Healthcare, Business Services, Technology and Energy/Utilities. Our thousands of customers come in all shapes and sizes and hail from 90+ countries—we work with anyone from boutique consultancies all the way up to multi billion dollar multinationals like Gilbarco. The one thing our clients all have in common is that they want to get paid faster and reduce the amount of effort on manual A/R activities.
Q: What exactly is Accounts Receivable Automation and how does it work? What makes it important for businesses?
A: Accounts Receivable Automation is all about looking at the many many steps that happen between “receivable” and “received” and having software perform as many of those tasks as possible, instead of a person performing them. That doesn’t mean you just push a button and an invoice gets sent by our software; it means the software knows when to send it so you don’t even need to think about it. At some level any Accounts Receivable Automation software shouldn’t be something that you use too much. Ideally you’ll be able to set it and forget it—and just get paid while you sleep. There will always be certain moments and exceptions that require you to use the software and interact with customers on billing matters, of course. But our aim as a company is to boil that work down to something that’s as rare an occurrence as possible. The process generally involves connecting Invoiced with your ERP or accounting system, entering your payment gateway details and configuring various features like reminder frequency, late fees, etc to align with your business preferences. That’s really all it takes to roll it out and experience the difference, which is what we often refer to as a “total A/R lifestyle change”.
Q: What are some of those manual tasks that need to be automated? And how does Invoiced address these?
A: You’d be shocked! Basic billing is actually pretty easy. But it gets more complicated when you consider things like calculating taxes, buyer-specific pricing catalogs, overage fees or proration. Once the invoice is generated it needs to be sent out, which is also typically a simple affair. But then you need to remind folks to pay and let them know how to pay. We see a lot of businesses managing these collections activities out of spreadsheets and handwritten notes. Those businesses either spend a lot of time on collections to get paid in a decent amount of time, or they don’t spend hardly anytime on it and they get paid extremely slowly, if at all. In some cases it’s both, which is truly the worst of both worlds. Then when the end customer is finally engaged and ready to pay you’ve got collections teams taking credit card info over the phone or waiting on a check or wire transfer. Once that payment is actually made you need to attribute it back to the right open invoice or balance in the accounting system. Now just imagine doing everything I just listed out for hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of invoices each month. These are just a few examples of tasks that our software does for you automatically; and when you shift all of that work from people to software you are unavoidably reducing the amount of time they’re spending on it by as much as 95%.
Q: As the industry’s highest rated solution for Accounts Receivable Automation, what steps do you recommend businesses take as they contemplate automating A/R?
A: Well first you should make sure you really understand your company’s current A/R environment very well. That means taking a hard look at your accounts receivable workload and understanding where all of the slow, manual work is concentrated so that you can know where you’re going to get the biggest bang for the buck. Second you should be looking for solutions that are “close to home”, meaning that your ERP or accounting software provider will likely already have A/R specific modules or a director of certified apps that are designed to interoperate with your financial system of record. And if they don’t have either, they might be able to recommend one. If they can’t recommend one, talk to your peers and consult user groups to find out what solutions they’ve used to tackle the same issues.
It’s also important to be diligent on the planning side. Know exactly what features are going to take you the furthest and if possible prioritize every feature you think you need. Create a comprehensive plan that includes rigorous software evaluation, any necessary procurement steps, a realistic implementation timeline and any team training you think might be needed leading up to launch. That way you, your vendor and your team can all be marching in the same direction and with the same understanding of what will be available for use, by whom and when.
Q: Tell us more about Invoiced. What are its key features and capabilities? How does it compare to other accounts receivable automation software available in the market?
Most of our features and capabilities fall into three distinct parts of the A/R process: billing, collections and payments. Billing is all about generating that critical artifact that tells customers exactly what they owe, for which products and services and by when. Invoiced provides many features that are often not included in the basic billing capabilities of most accounting and ERP systems such as subscription management, early payment discounts, late fees, custom pricing catalogs.
Collections include all of the communication and reminder activities that need to happen in order to keep customers on their agreed payment schedule, and importantly, the information they need to understand what they owe and how they can pay. Invoiced includes a unique “Smart Chasing” system that enables businesses to set up multi-channel reminder cadences that can be customized for different customer segments or even individual customers.
Finally, payment acceptance involves allowing customers to pay invoices and balances either online or to let the business know when to expect an offline payment. Once the payment is made, the transaction needs to be matched to the appropriate invoice or invoices and then properly reflected in the main accounting or ERP system. Invoiced includes a customizable payment portal where customers can pay online and make promises-to-pay, as well as a range of intelligent cash application and reconciliation features that ensure transactions are associated with the right invoices and synced back to the business’ financial system of record.
While Invoiced includes literally hundreds of other features besides the ones I just listed, it’s these core capabilities all working in concert across the end-to-end accounts receivable function that enable truly automated A/R.
Q: Looking into the future, what are some market trends or technologies you see on the rise in accounts receivable automation and how is Invoiced intending to address these?
A: We listen to our customers and the market overall very intently. As we look ahead we see important opportunities in accounts receivable automation for more intelligent credit management including customer scoring and credit/risk assessment. There is also a growing appetite for better connecting A/R systems like Invoiced with accounts payable solutions that many of our customers’ customers utilize. That level of integration creates new opportunities for buyer initiated payments as well as new data sources for richer cash flow forecasting. While our collection automation capabilities are highly regarded in the industry, we see several opportunities to have our solution cover even more complex collection workflows and tasks. And lastly, reporting and analytics represent an area where clients of all industries and sizes have an insatiable thirst for more richness and customization. These are a few key areas where we expect to invest our product development resources in the year ahead – although there are many other types of features we have our eyes on, and we are constantly adapting our product development focus to meet the highest priority needs of the market.
About Invoiced
Invoiced is an award-winning platform for helping businesses get paid faster, waste less time on collections and provide a better payment experience for customers. With thousands of customers in 92 countries and $50 billion in receivables processed, Invoiced is pioneering the field of accounts receivable automation. Based in Austin, Texas, Invoiced is the #1 rated A/R automation platform G2 and an official member of Forbes Finance Council. To learn more, visit invoiced.com.
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