homefinance NewsIs e invoicing a boon or a bane for businesses from smaller towns?

Is e-invoicing a boon or a bane for businesses from smaller towns?

Given the current times, businesses of any nature are required to have an online presence.

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By CNBCTV18.com Contributor May 25, 2021 11:01:17 AM IST (Updated)

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Is e-invoicing a boon or a bane for businesses from smaller towns?
Given the current times, businesses of any nature are required to have an online presence. Digitization has become an integral part of business success. Considering this, many companies from small cities and towns are taking steps to digitize their operations. Research has revealed that Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities are witnessing a mushrooming of startups that are apparently a new breed of ‘tech-powered’ entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs hailing from small cities understand the power and importance of digital operations and creating an online presence. As a result, there has been a 3x rise in small businesses setting up online stores. Many have come up with flexible and lean business models that operate in a hybrid mix i.e., have an online-offline presence. Small city businesses are quickly evolving to fulfill consumer and industry demands. Adopting e-invoicing is one such step taken by many small business owners to strengthen their financial standing.
E-invoicing for Small-Town Businesses
In traditional business models, invoice tracking is a tough and highly complex process. The absence of this crucial aspect often leads to an increased burden of unpaid bills. Small business owners, especially, cannot afford to have long-overdue bills as it can lead to enormous financial ruin. Online invoicing, or e-invoicing, makes it easy and convenient to keep a track of bills and payments. It removes the requirement for manual data entry. This empowers businesses to carry out their operations in a more efficient manner.
E-invoice offers multiple benefits to businesses from tier-2 and tier-3 cities and towns, which are:
1. Cost-effective
Paperwork for accounting has become a thing of the past. With online invoicing, there is no need for businesses to use papers, stamps, and envelopes anymore. Also, there is no need for a storage facility. This enables a company to save on the extra costs as well as extra space. Paper records take time to be prepared and processed which are time-consuming and raise the overall administrative costs. Online invoicing, thus, is a cost-efficient option ensuring business success.
2. Saves Time
Online invoicing allows businesses to quickly create and send across many invoices. This helps save time for business owners, who already have a lot on their plate. By saving time on invoicing, businesses can focus on other important tasks like improving conversions, managing staff better and holding client meetings that are otherwise delayed. E-invoicing shortens the time span between sending an invoice as well as receiving payments. With the e-invoice software, the invoice reaches the right person and business owners receive the notification when the invoice is opened and read by the client/customer.
3. Accessible Anywhere, Anytime
With online invoicing, businesses can manage all the client information and billing status from a single web application. This way business owners can be more productive and get their financial and payments’ status all in one place. One doesn’t have to be in their office to find, send, receive or do anything with their invoices. Cloud services only require an internet connection. Therefore, e-invoices can be accessed from anywhere, anytime, and any device (laptop, tablet or smartphone). They can be easily organized and looked up for information whenever required.
4. Helps Schedule Invoices for Sending Timely
Businesses can set up their e-invoice software so that they get sent out automatically on specified dates and time. With this feature, business owners do not have to worry about forgetting to send invoices to their clients and vendors as the reminder set does everything by itself. Also, when a client opens and reads the invoice shared, business owner will receive an automatic notification about that. Additionally, one can set automatic notes and reminders for every client, and notify them about payment due dates, even when they have expired.
5. Eliminates Errors
In a traditional paper invoicing system, there are various steps involved which pose a bigger possibility for commission of errors. This tends to take up a lot of time in correction. And then finding out the missing information, piecing it together and removing invalid numbers – all take up a lot of time and efforts. But with online invoicing, small businesses can correct every information stated in their records, by editing invoices just like one would edit any other text document.
Summing Up
Overall, e-invoicing offers businesses from small towns and cities a huge opportunity for enabling faster payments which can help them have a better cash flow. More money and more amount of time devoted to more important developmental activities mean a greater chance of bringing about growth and sustainability in the business. E-invoicing, thus, is proving to be a boon for businesses from small towns and cities.
The author, Rajesh Gupta, is a Co-founder at Busy Infotech Pvt Ltd. The views expressed are personal

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