[thelist] Invoice handling services.

Andy Warwick andy.war at ntlworld.com
Tue Aug 7 04:31:51 CDT 2001


Ryan

It's called factoring, and you can do a search on Yahoo (or other search
engine of choice) to find dozens of companies that do it.

On a personal note, as a freelance designer and programmer who handles his
own accounts, I would strongly advise against doing it - as would many
accountants and financial advisers I know - for three reasons.

One. You've worked for the money, so why let someone else take a cut for
sending out a few bits of paper that really won't take that long if you have
a decent system in place. I use MYOB to handle all my account, and it takes
a couple of hours a week to handle invoices, statements, cash flow, yadda,
yadda...

Two: The sense of control and financial knowledge you have about your own
business when you do your own invoices, etc., far out ways any benefit I can
see from using a factoring company. You really get an idea as to how your
business is doing when you look at hard numbers, and won't get into the
position of kidding yourself that that really bad, late-paying customer who
gives you constant grief is worth keeping.

Three: To a factoring company of any size, your customers are just numbers
and names, and will no way get the personal service that as an independent
professional is one of your major USPs. How will a client feel if he gets a
faceless letter saying an invoice is overdue, rather than a friendly call to
chat about the kids and the bar-b-q last weekend that mentions the invoice
in passing?

YMMV

Warmest regards

-- 
Andy Warwick       

email: andy.w at creed.co.uk     PGP ID: 0xB1D73499
================================================
Creed New Media Design        tel: 07976 205085
Nottingham, England               url: http://www.creed.co.uk
================================================
website production - internet programming - new media consultancy
cdrom multimedia - graphic design - digital image retouching
================================================

> Since a number of people on this list are independent professionals, I
> thought this question might be appropriate.  Are there any services out
> there that handle the invoicing process (i.e. sending invoice, receiving
> payment, following up...).  I'd certainly be willing to pay a percentage if
> this could be handled automatically.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Ryan Finley
> President - SurveyMonkey.com (http://www.surveymonkey.com)
> 
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