How do you set up your invoicing?

[mach1]

How far in advance do you generate the invoice?

Do you email it only, or do you also snail mail it?

Do you send a reminder(s)? When?

When do you send overdue notices?

 

 

I'll start.

 

My invoices get generated 30 days in advance which should be ample time for people who like to mail a check time to mail it, me to get it and mark the invoice paid before their due date. I also snail mail a copy of the invoice to select clients based upon past payment history. They get a reminder about 10 days before the due date. They get an email on the day it's due, and then 2 more overdue notices sent 30 and 60 days after the due date.

 

This works great for my clients that pay by check or have not signed up for recurring payments. If I don't send out the reminder, or the snail mail, I don't get paid until they get overdue notices.

 

For the people that have signed up for recurring invoicing, the early invoice generation and the reminders confuse them.

 

For the people that have signed up for monthly billing, they get tons of emails. Normally, after their invoice is paid automatically, the very next day, the system generates a new invoice for the next month. Then the get the reminder every month on top of that. It's annoying to them. But if I turn it off, I have trouble collecting from my clients that pay annually.

 

So, how do you handle invoicing? Is it possible to make it so that clients with recurring or monthly billing don't get sent the emails every month while still allowing other clients to get them?

 

Any help and insight into how you handle your invoicing is appreciated.

[tripler]

Products:

 

Prior: 5 / 3 day

Overdue +1 +3 +5

Late +6

Suspend +7

Terminate +15

 

Domains

 

Prior 60 / 30 /15 /7

 

Email ONLY though if someone really wanted a paper invoice I would do it for them if they were big enough client.

 

 

I would get really annoyed if I got a invoice 30 days in advanced. You continuing to send overdue statements up to 60 days later is weird, just suspend their account and they pay up =)

 

I assume the annoying factor for your clients is sending them a invoice on the day/after they get their current invoice.

[mach1]

Thanks for your comments tripler. It looks like you don't have any clients that mail you a check. My market is local small businesses and many of them just prefer to mail a check so I don't 5 days in advance will work for my situation. Is there a way to invoice clients differently based upon their default payment gateway? An add-on maybe?