Simple, fast invoicing software

Using simple, fast invoicing software lets entrepreneurs offload time-consuming administrative tasks, but the benefit goes far beyond that. Beyond accounting operations, you gain access to the numbers and statistics essential for steering your business strategy. Let’s look at how to weave your accounting software into your company’s daily life, so you can better plan for its future.

How your invoicing software contributes to your business strategy

Time always moves too fast for an entrepreneur, which is why you need to delegate everything you can. If you’re a sole trader, or you work alone or with a very small team, you’ll usually find that 24 hours a day just isn’t enough.

The advantage of simple, fast invoicing software is that it frees up more of your time for running your business. It’s not just essential for handling day-to-day accounting operations — it also plays a part in your business strategy.

Setting up your business strategy

Before launching your business, it’s essential to carry out market research and put together a business plan. Analyzing your industry, your potential customers and the state of your competitors forms the foundation on which you build your business strategy.

Up to that point, you’re working with hypotheses and made-up figures, so you can do without accounting software. But as soon as your business gets going, you need to check your scenario against your real numbers. For that, you need simple, fast invoicing software that gives you a full overview. It also lets you generate reports using different criteria to understand the trends taking shape day by day.

A company’s growth is never exactly as planned. You might get unpleasant surprises if you were overly optimistic; equally, your numbers might exceed your expectations if you were too cautious. Either way, how quickly you react determines your success. It makes sense to revise your plan when your figures fall short of your business plan, but it’s just as important when they soar past it. If you become a victim of your own success, you can quickly find yourself overwhelmed and unable to deliver a satisfactory service — which risks a sharp downturn. So it pays to stay very vigilant and review your accounts on a regular basis.

Tracking your business strategy

As the weeks and months go by, tracking your numbers means you’ll need to keep adjusting your business strategy. What’s more, if you’re a first-time entrepreneur or you’re breaking into a new industry, you’ll draw on your fresh experience to refine your action plan.

Your goal is to keep making your business strategy more effective, and for that you need reliable figures. With simple, fast invoicing software, you can export your data in different formats. This helps you understand how your customers behave, which areas are worth investing in, and where you can cut costs.

Based on your results, you reinforce your strengths and put a strategy in place to shore up your weaknesses.

Simple, fast invoicing software and e-commerce

E-commerce, which keeps growing at pace, demands exceptional responsiveness. Competition is fierce and consumers are fickle. If you run an online store, you’re likely running advertising campaigns. It’s then crucial to track them day by day so you can adjust your business strategy in real time.

With invoicing software like Bizyness, you’re guaranteed effective synchronization. Since it’s compatible with e-commerce CMS platforms, the software directly connects your online store to your accounting. Thanks to its retroactive effect, you can import your history to get a relevant, complete picture.

By studying your numbers — factoring in the margin available relative to your revenue — you can adjust your strategy and plan your advertising campaigns ahead of time.

Managing multiple online stores

You may also own several online stores. Either you run a single-product model and need to create a new store for each new item you want to sell, or you want to split your store into several entities to clearly separate product types and better target your customers.

To keep managing multiple online stores simple and avoid eating into your work time, you need flexible, easy-to-use invoicing software. Bizyness, for example, lets you sync several online stores in your personal workspace, even if you use different CMS platforms.

Using your numbers to find investors

At any point in your company’s life, you may need investors. Unless you’re running a charity (in which case we’d call them patrons), investors aren’t philanthropists — they need hard numbers to be convinced.

Investments serve various purposes:

• covering a cash-flow shortfall because your launch is slower than expected;
• funding an advertising campaign to build awareness;
• launching an innovative product that will take time to gain market traction;
• acquiring a competitor’s business to merge customer bases;
• investing in equipment or staff, etc.

Depending on your goal, your software needs to be able to export your data using the right criteria. This lets you present professional, reliable reports capable of convincing others that investing in your company is worthwhile.

Finding partners and collaborators

Along the same lines as finding investors, you may find it necessary to recruit partners or collaborators to help grow your business. You’ll need to show them attractive prospects, backed by numbers, to get them to join you.

Accounting exports

Simple, fast invoicing software gives you all your accounting exports in just a few clicks. You’ll need these for your accountant, as well as for any other advisors.

One recurring complaint among business owners is isolation. They lack perspective but struggle to share their doubts about their company’s future. It’s essential to bring in outside input for a fresh, more objective view — whether that’s an accountant, a professional consultant, an industry association, and so on. Whoever it is, they’ll need clearly presented accounting data to base their analysis on.

Staying on top of cash flow

Cash flow sits at the heart of any business, since it determines how much room you have to maneuver. You need to know the state of your cash flow at all times, factoring in your projections.

A tool like Bizyness proves invaluable here, as it lets you anticipate your cash-flow movements. Simple, fast invoicing software was originally designed for sole traders, but it has since adapted to all legal business structures.

— For every invoice you issue, Bizyness tells you the amount of contributions you’ll owe URSSAF at the next due date, whether monthly or quarterly.

— You log your day-to-day expenses as they happen, as well as any one-off purchases. This lets you estimate your recurring costs so you can factor them into your projections, and work out how much you have available for one-off investments.

— If you’re a sole trader, the software keeps an eye on the VAT exemption threshold. If you need to declare and pay VAT, your transactions are already built into the software.

Good business management necessarily takes projections into account. Only simple invoicing software lets you build them and plan your strategy ahead of time. You always know the state of your cash flow and can plan business moves without putting your company’s balance at risk.

Accounting position and personal finances

The state of your accounts affects your personal investments too. Indeed, when you want to take out a personal loan, you need to provide proof of income. Whether you want to buy a new car or your primary residence, you need to prove to your personal banker that you can repay a loan.

Without payslips to show, you can present your bank with an accounting statement from your business instead.

How to recognize simple, fast invoicing software

Taking all of the above into account, here are the criteria that let you judge the quality of simple, fast invoicing software. More than just an accounting assistant, it becomes an invaluable aid in running your business.

Test your software before investing

Once you’ve picked the invoicing software that seems best suited to you, don’t dive in headfirst — take the time to test it. It’s better to spend a little extra time upfront to make sure you’re investing in the best option. If you have to switch after just a few months, you’ll lose even more time on synchronization and getting to grips with your new tool.

Accounting software usually comes with a trial period, which you should use to check that the features on offer truly match what’s promised. Use it to confirm that the software is well suited to your company’s legal status too.

The trial period is also a chance to make sure you have access to responsive, personalized customer support. It’s essential that the software’s developer and team respond promptly to all your requests. You shouldn’t be met with canned answers that just point you to a generic FAQ when you run into difficulties.

Finally, use this test period to ask about the software’s roadmap and how updates are handled. Accounting rules shift and change very frequently, and accounting software needs to keep pace. It’s also fair to expect updates that add new features and improve existing processes.

Check that it fits your personal situation

You’ll naturally choose invoicing software suited to your legal status, but you should also plan for the possibility of that status changing. If you’re a sole trader, for example, you’re subject to thresholds that force you to set up a different type of company once you exceed them. You might also consider taking on partners or hiring staff, which isn’t possible as a sole trader. The software absolutely must be built to handle this scenario.

Comprehensive features

Professional invoicing software should offer as many features as possible. These need to be both essential and unlimited. Watch out for providers who offer gimmicks instead of developing more complex but necessary functions. Being unlimited matters too, since your goal is to keep growing, and you shouldn’t be held back by the software’s limitations.

Here’s the list of must-have, unlimited features your invoicing software should offer:

• creating quotes, purchase orders, invoices and delivery notes;
• creating recurring invoices for subscriptions and multiple orders;
• emailing documents as PDFs (readable on any computer);
• managing URSSAF contributions as part of your projections;
• bank synchronization;
• managing expenses and costs;
• invoicing in foreign currencies, outside the eurozone;
• translating invoices into foreign languages;
• syncing with different e-commerce stores;
• managing disbursements, deposits, discounts, split invoices, etc.;
• detailed statistics and exports of all kinds;
• creating customer and supplier records;
• managing sole-trader thresholds: revenue and VAT exemption;
• calculating VAT and generating reports;
• customizing documents and managing several entities, each with different logos and colors;
• compatibility with mobile phones and tablets;
• storing all data in the cloud;
• creating reports and exports for different stakeholders;
• creating the purchase register and revenue ledger (mandatory for sole traders);
• compatibility with automation tools like Zapier.

Take the time to choose the accounting software that best suits you — it will be your best ally in securing your company’s future.