The Cash Flow Blog

Here is a great reminder for all of us:  If there’s one monumentally frustrating and easy to overcome aspect of a cash flow problem it’s timely invoicing customers.  In many cash flow crunches, you can look back a few weeks in time and find regret in not getting customer payment activities underway sooner – if you invoiced sooner, you might have the money now.

I’ve worked with more than one company where this simple and seemingly obvious business function gets ignored.

Here are several comments I’ve heard as excuses for not timely invoicing customers:

• I don’t have enough time.
• It’s too hard.
• It takes too long.
• We can do it next week.  We need to keep working on the project right now.
• I don’t like paperwork.

The list can go on and on, but you’ll never find a valid excuse.

You have to invoice customers on a regular and routine basis – the best time being immediately after a project is complete.  At a minimum, you should prepare and send invoices once a week.

No matter your circumstance, invoicing customers can never be viewed as a hassle.  Timely invoicing customers is nothing less than a necessary function of survival.

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Update: Here is the tool I use to timely invoice customers.