As a retailer, you know the importance of not only getting paid but getting paid on time. Late payments and unpaid balances on invoices can create serious disruptions to your cash flow and other business issues.

But are you doing all that you can to ensure that your invoices get paid on time? While you can’t completely control when vendors and clients pay you, you can take measures to ensure you’re paid within a reasonable time period. Strategies like using an online invoice tool that connects with your point-of-sale system, setting clear expectations about payment terms, and making sure your invoice template includes necessary information are just a few ways to accomplish this.

Most businesses tend to incorporate apps for handling invoices and giving credit. However, they are not up to par; perhaps the application faces a bug issue, or the features are not suitable to give enough benefits to the business. Oscar Udhaar is the ideal application your store needs to keep track of debts and get paid on time. It provides a unique prospect for your business because it is an effective and trouble-free technological solution to managing credit efficiently. With Oscar Udhaar, business owners can keep in touch with their customers both online and offline. Business related information is efficiently and confidentially handled by backing up and encrypting both existing and lost data. This helps you automate the way you handle your accounts receivable; instead of relying on manual ledgers and books, now you have a reliable app by your side.

Moreover, Udhaar tracking allows businesses to keep track of their customers’ payment schedule so that each payment is made without delay or any sort of fraud. It is important for businesses to be vary of fraud being committed since most embezzlers are good at covering their tracks.

Moreover, Khata Book is an Indian counterpart to Oscar Udhaar which is a digital ledger cash book. It is free, 100% safe and secure for all types of businesses to maintain their customers’ accounts.

Bahi Khatas often are many and take up a lot of space. With Khatabook, you can transfer and manage all your business and personal transactions on your phone. 

Below are some tips to help you keep track of your payments and receive them on time. 

 

• Incentivize early or on-time payments

You can encourage your customers to make an early payment (or to simply pay on time) by creating an incentive to do so. Discounts, or credits toward their next invoice, can make a real difference in encouraging early payment.

Depending on the product, you can also offer pre-order terms for those who pay in full upfront.

 

•  Penalize late payments

In addition to incentivizing early payment, you can also implement penalties for late payments. Standard terms are to charge an additional amount (typically a percentage of the balance),

after a certain amount of time has passed.

You can also lay out additional consequences for late payments, such as passing the account to a collections agency after a certain amount of time. Make sure, if you do state consequences, that you are prepared to follow through if needed.

Be aware that clients who are habitual late payers or who are potentially defaulting on a payment may simply ignore such penalties in the hopes that you will give up and go away. You can, however, also leverage the penalty to incentivize settling an outstanding invoice. You can offer to forgive the late fee upon payment of the outstanding balance.

If the relationship is an ongoing one, you might want to choose to hold work or stop providing your product or service until the account balance is settled. Offering customers options such as a payment plan can be more successful than starting out by playing hardball.

No one likes chasing up late payments, but you can also get help in following up with overdue invoices. Send automated reminders via Oscar Udhaar to remind clients for you.

 

• Make payments easy

The easier you make it to send a payment, the more likely you are to receive your payment promptly. Sometimes customers simply forget to pay an invoice because there is an additional step required and they set it aside to do later. The more options you can offer for easy, quick payment, the faster you can get paid.

Make sure you know ahead of time how your customer prefers to pay in order to provide them with the easiest option.

 

• Know your customer’s payment cycle

For larger customers, you may need to take their pay cycle into consideration. Some companies process all their payments for invoices on certain days of the month and may only process payments once or twice in a calendar month. If this applies to you, make sure you know this information in advance so that you can plan your cash flow and invoicing schedule accordingly.

 

• Clearly label all items 

Another way to avoid delays and re-issuing of invoices is to ensure that all charges are clearly itemized and that you spell out each item purchased. For example, include the product name and description rather than simply an order or SKU number. This makes it easy for the customer to reconcile the invoice with their order history, and you won’t have to have a back-and-forth conversation to clarify what the items are or what the numbers mean.

Ensure that you set clear expectations and formal terms around payment at the outset of any agreement or product order. Invoice payment terms should outline how you wish to accept payment and with the evolution of online banking online credit card payments and apps like Oscar Udhaar and KhataBook, payment methods are changing. It is up to the retailer to embrace the technological revolution and benefit from it.