New take on things................... what's yours ??

[Gino]

Okay, we've been in business 30 years and I've been doing this stuff almost 40 years. Many things have come and gone in this industry, but one that is certainly here to stay is the computer with all of its pros and cons.
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All these years, our vendors.... all of them, send a packing slip with the merchandise and then an invoice is followed up in a day or so. We compare the two documents and then make payment according to our terms. This has been the norm for decades. Hardly anything is missed except we all know there are always things gonna slip through the cracks once in a while.

This just happened yesterday. I was going down my in-box and saw nothing unusual. Just happened to check my junk folder and low and behold, there's an e-mail from someone I didn't recognize. I almost hit delete and noticed out in the 'Title' column it had a word I did understand. I opened it and presto, there was an invoice from something I got earlier in the day.

Seems this vendor is cutting costs in a variety of ways. Instead of have three part ncr packing slips and invoices, they are generating packing slips through Quickbooks and giving that with the merchandise. At the end of the day, they have a guy send our pdf invoices via the internet and this is what we're to pay from, from now on. For us, this is not what we're set up to do, nor is it any better for us. I feel the vendor's role is to facilitate our doing better and his doing what he/she can do to keep us a happy customer. This method is much more of a headache for us, but I can understand their need or want to cut costs... but at our expense. I now have to do secretarial work in order to make sure nothing slips through. On occasions, we have problems with our e-mail, as I'm sure many of you do and this just doesn't sound like a very reliable means to collect your money.

How many of you are receiving all... or any of your invoices in this manner ?? Is it just a young thing and a sign of the times that we're becoming more lazy and cheap in collecting and many standard business modes are being replaced with which is now considered the new business norm ??

Out of many-many vendors of ours, this is the only one of ours in both personal and business companies which are doing this.

Gino
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[WildWestDesigns]

All my invoices are received via the same method and I also send out my invoices in the same manner. Now, a lot of that is due to a very big chunk of what I do is done completely via the computer (embroidery designs), so I already had to be set up for that to an extent.

I would say that this is the norm. Is it lazier? I don't know about that. However, I do think that it is going to be more of the norm from here on out.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

We get the vast majority of our invoices from our vendors via email. We also request a faxed statement at the end of the billing cycle to make sure no emails were missed. Once you get into the swing of it it actually works great.

Like you said, emails get lost in cyberspace, it's a reality of technology, that's why we request a faxed hard copy of the statement as well, so we can make sure we pay everything. We actually like this better than receiving paper invoices, we were finding paper copies were actually far easier to misplace than electronic versions. As long as the email goes through, there's a copy of that invoice somewhere. You may have to go searching for it in your email program, but it's there. With paper copies, if it's lost, it's lost.

About a year or so ago we switched over to billing our clients this way as well. The vast majority prefer this over getting mailed paper bills as well. Some old-school folks were a little resistant to it, but it helps keep our costs and our overhead down. We're not a huge shop but there are months when we send 300+ invoices, that takes a LOT of manpower to do the old fashioned way, print, fold, stuff in envelope, label the envelope, stamp the envelope, and mail. It's not hard for one or two invoices, but at any volume the steps to prepare an invoice for snail-mail adds up extremely quickly. We estimate that for us, moving to electronic billing freed up our billing person approx. 40-60 hours per month. That's time we can pay her to more aggressively collect on late invoices, help other customers, take simple orders, etc..

 

[Gino]

Very interesting. Keep the ideas and views coming. Maybe this old dog will have to learn a new trick or two.

I particularly like the fax of a 30 day cycle for verification.

 

[Circleville Signs]

I'm with the other guys in the thread. Not only do we receive the vast majority of our invoices via email, but for vendors who do not default to that, I make sure to REQUEST it. For me, email is much more reliable that snail mail. There are times when a day or two will pass that I don't even go to our mailbox. But there is never a 3 hour window that passes that I don't check email.

 

[2NinerNiner2]

Fax? What's that? LOL Really, who still has/uses a fax? Scan and email

 

[wildside]

we are on the fence with email invoices...

we get emailed invoices from a few vendors and it works pretty well i suppose

as far as emailing invoices ourselves, we are in an area that some people do not have an email address or even a computer, hell i see people writing a check at the convenience store all the time.....

most people pay by check as they pick stuff up and not much issue with it, but would actually love to email all invoices for the "accounts" clients, and then they can mail it or bring it in

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Fax? What's that? LOL Really, who still has/uses a fax? Scan and email

You would be amazed how many faxes we get in a day and how many times it's saved our butts. It's old school but it's a reliable way to verify orders and account statuses when all else fails. We actually have about a dozen customers who send us over so many orders that we requested they fax a hard copy of their purchase orders so we can match them up with the emailed orders/artwork files. One in particular sends over 3-4 orders a day on average, and by getting a faxed hard copy we can keep track of things and it's helped us catch missing emails or art files many, many times. These are not small companies that we have do this either, one is General Electric for example.

Like I said, it's also a reliable way to verify your account with vendors, it's saved us there many times. It's especially helpful with vendors where you have many many invoices a month. Email is great, it's revolutionized the world, but it's only 99% reliable. In business, that 1% where email does it's own thing can really screw you. That why we still rely on our trusty fax machine to make sure everybody is on the same page.

 

[CanuckSigns]

We are also using email to send invoices to customers, we find we have been getting paid quicker now than we were when we mailed them. That could be in part to Canada Post being notoriously slow (it once took 14 business days to send a letter 15 miles up the road).

We also looked at our postage costs for the previous year, and it's amazing! We were spending almost $6000 a year on stamps!! we have managed to cut that in half now.

 

[njshorts]

We e-mail invoices and prefer e-mailed invoices to us... Makes accounting work quicker and leaves less paper/files laying around as well as ensures that we get it- mail around here is sketchy.

 

[SignManiac]

I'm an old timer myself, and prefer getting invoices through email. I also send out most of my invoices through QB as pdf's. There's just as great a chance an invoice will/can be lost through snail mail. I've had it happen before.

I also recently switched all my banking over to online payments. No more stamps, envelopes, cost of checks and deposit slips, time to address, etc. Plus most payments get paid the day I say so my money sits in my bank longer for me.

I have embraced the devil and love it!

 

[Baz]

I love sending and receiving invoices by email. For me it is allot faster than snail mail. I can create the invoice in my software (Simply Accounting) print it out as a .pdf file and email to the customer right away.

 

[petepaz]

about a year ago we installed a system called E2 and this handles all our orders, invoices and purchasing. it did take a little while to get used to but it is much easier because everything is in the computer now. i can check orders for customers, when i order items i just click a few buttons and email it to the vendor, look up customer contact info and a million other things i don't even know yet. we do our ups through this system. after you printa packing list the orders are sent to a file that gets synced to our ups computer and then you can print out all the labels. the owner can do all his weekly reports, check the shipping totals for the week. and like you gino alot of our vendors are emailing the invoices as well. i normall wait at least a year before i delete emails (other then junk) so if emailed paperwork is misplaced i have it right there on my computer. it's the wave of the future climb on board gino

 

[Baz]

it's the wave of the future climb on board gino

..... and get a smartphone while you're at it! :ROFLMAO:

 

[Gino]

I'm trying.............

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Baz......... two words for you UN - Invited :ROFLMAO:
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[CanuckSigns]

I'm trying.............

View attachment 70901



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Baz......... two words for you UN - Invited :ROFLMAO:
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I'm scared of what I would find on your hard drive, you always seem to have a strange/creepy picture at the ready!:ROFLMAO:

 

[Gino]

I'm scared of what I would find on your hard drive, you always seem to have a strange/creepy picture at the ready!:ROFLMAO:

Nah.... you're just paranoid................

 

[Techman]

Almost all invoices come via email now. I save the pdf into the invoice folder according to vendor. Save the yearly files to disk and be done with it.

 

[letterman7]

I know who you're talking about Gino. With the delivery there is a slip with the item and costs already outlined on it... I make that my invoice and simply compare that to what gets emailed. I always want the paper for end of year stuff - I don't care how it gets here.

 

[Gino]

I know who you're talking about Gino. With the delivery there is a slip with the item and costs already outlined on it... I make that my invoice and simply compare that to what gets emailed. I always want the paper for end of year stuff - I don't care how it gets here.

I'm not condemning the company for doing this, just that I almost deleted something because I knew nothing about this.

I called them today and had a nice conversation with them. They're going to keep us on snail mail until we get our end cleaned up as to why their stuff is going into my junk folder. First of all, they nor anyone else is supposed to do billing or any other accounting through our production facility, let alone our production computers. It's a no/no on the accounting end of things for that sort of stuff to go through production computers. State rules. So, we have to set it up to go to the office and directly to accounting on that e-mail address.

Turns out, they were supposed to notify us of this new method before just doing it. He apologized that no one told us or we tried it first. They just sent out blindly.... at least to us and it didn't go well. After the holidays and some other stuff we're doing, we'll be set up and perhaps at that time we'll get into the swing of things.

THEN BAZ.................. I'll look at getting the Goddess a smart phone. Thing is... she's already smart. I don't know how a frickin' phone can make her any smarter. :ROFLMAO:
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