Advanced Billing Solutions, LLC

What are the Benefits for Outsourcing Your Billing?

On the face of it, I guess you can sum it up this way.  Business owners should focus their time and energy on the tasks that bring more money into the business, while delegating all other “low dollar” tasks to others.

Meaning, to maximize your business you need to focus your energy on the essential functions of your business that keep you in business, such as:

• marketing for new customers/clients
• on-going marketing to existing customers/clients
• doing the “high dollar” tasks that can’t be outsourced (you know better what this means for your particular business)

What about all the rest?  Well, think of it this way.  Is administrative busy-work the best use of your time?  Think about it.

Not to mention, here are a list of five (5) ways outsourcing your business to a billing services company can help you with the bottom line…

1. help you get paid on time
2. help you make more money
3. help improve your cash flow
4. help you build your business
5. help you retain customers

How can it do all that?

Get Paid On Time

If you want to get paid on time, you have to invoice on time.  If you are a landscaper, it means getting your cut list out the door on time, every month.  And then making it easy for your customers to pay you.

Do you accept credit cards?  If not, maybe you should.

On a side note, my other business is merchant processing.  You can visit the site by following the link.  It is a documented fact that accepting payments by credit card will help you get paid much quicker.  People pay for all types of goods and services by credit, and are more likely to “take out plastic” than write a check.

By accepting credit cards, you speed up the payment process because people are more likely to pay by credit card then with a check.

Additionally, payments by credit card can be processed from your desk with a computer, with money deposited into your account 24 to 48 hours later.

No more waiting on checks.  No more waiting for “out of town” checks to clear.

For more information, check out this article on merchant accounts and checks by following the link.

Do you have clear records on which customers have paid, and which ones still owe you money?  If not, your accounts receivables are a mess.

Being able to quickly account for who has paid you, and who hasn’t, is important for your business and your cash flow.  How much time are you wasting each month just trying to figure out who has paid, who is late, and then re-invoicing those customers who owe you money.

Having a monthly financial report goes a long way to streamlining your billing process.

We’ll address the other four (4) points in upcoming articles, so come back when you get a chance.  You can always bookmark our site as well. So stay tuned…

Next Steps…

Ready to get started.  Currently we are offering a…

30 Day FREE “no-cost, no-strings-attached” Trial

Test the program with our “no-cost, no-strings-attached” test drive.  Prove to yourself that it’s the “easy-breezy” system you’ve been waiting for.  If you’re not happy with the results simply let us know.  You risk nothing.

Here’s how the program works:

1. You or your crew call a toll free number and leave a message regarding work done (date, time, etc.)
2. Your voice message becomes an email.
3. We create the invoice based on your notes
4. If we have any questions we give you a call on our dime
5. Once invoices are ready we mail them for you

What could be easier than that?

To discover how we can help to automate your lawn service billing process, visit the link to give us a call at 877-262-3712. For legal billing services simply follow the link.

Are you in another industry?  No problems.  Our billing system is ideal for just about any professional practice.  Leave us a comment below to discover how we can help you and we’ll reply by email.

We look forward to helping you streamline your billing process.

How can an outsource billing service help your business?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that times are tough for many businesses today.  Even if you refuse to buy into the “sky is falling” hype about the economy, it is true that many folks are feeling the pinch.

Especially now the decisions driving business owners are absolutely critical to their success.  What do I mean?

Well, here’s a story my dad recently shared with me.

My dad stopped by a restaurant the both of us to visit for lunch a while back.  The new owner admitted that things were tough, and that he had to cut back on staff.  This included not only one of the chefs, but also the professional cleaning service that would come in every week to keep the place spotless.

My dad admitted that the place looked “filthy.”  The business owner now cleans up the place every night.  By himself.

And it shows.

The end result?

Let’s just say fewer people are stopping by to eat.  And that becomes a cash flow problem.

Talk about being penny wise and dollar foolish.

And yet, this problem (and proposed “solution”) are all too common in business.  Cutting costs and corners makes sense, but only if it puts more revenue and/or more profit into your pocket.

Clearly, the restaurant owner’s decision to “fire” the cleaning staff has dramatically affected his business.  And not for the better.

So what’s the moral of the story?

Professional Billing Service

What can a professional billing service do for your business?

Let’s break out a few critical tasks vital to your business success that you should NEVER outsource:

1. your marketing
2. your customer service
3. what you actually do for clients

If you’re the owner of a lawn service company, it means you need to control your marketing to attract NEW clients, service existing clients, and managing your crews actually doing the work.

As for the rest?  It’s up to you.

Let me share a quick story about a recent experience with a landscaping company.

During this past winter the last storm of the year was brutal.  It was too much to clear my driveway.  My lawn guy was out of town, so I called on the guy who takes care of my neighbor to plow me out. True to his word, he came by that day and took care of it for me.

That was two months ago.  I haven’t received an invoice yet.

Now, does that make me a bad guy for not paying?

I don’t think so.  Weeks went by before I even noticed.  We’re ALL busy with family, work, you name it.  And all I have is the guy’s cell phone number to boot.

Look, he knows where I live.  He drove by to give me his cell phone number, didn’t he?

Now, think that’s an isolated case?  Hardly.

Recently a business owner called me to see what I could do for his business.  Turns out the person he was using didn’t stay on top of the invoices (he has 120 customers).  And according to him, it was costing him money since he was losing some clients.

If you think your customers will remind you to invoice them, think again.  It just doesn’t work that way.  And it makes you look sloppy.  Unprofessional.

Remember the restaurant owner with the filthy place no one wants to visit anymore?  Well, that’s how you look when you forget to send out invoices.  Or send out incomplete ones.

Your customers will gladly pay you if your invoice demonstrates…

1. value
2. effort

And that’s what an outsource billing service should do for you.

Next Steps…

So what key questions should you ask a billing company before signing up with them?  Here’s a short list for your review:

1. What is involved in the fee (i.e. postage, envelopes, etc)?
2. Is there a monthly fee, even during winter months/downtime?
3. What reporting is provided?
4. Will follow up invoices (i.e. Second Notices) be included in the program fee

If you’d like to discover how we can help to automate your lawn service billing process, visit the link to give us a call at 877-262-3712.  We look forward to helping you streamline your billing process.

For legal billing services, the same process applies.  The only added step is that we fax to you copies of the first draft of invoices for you to review.  If there are any corrections, fax those back to us and we’ll make all the needed changes.

It just doesn’t get any easier than that…

We look forward to hearing from you.