“I love paper receipts” said no one ever. Paper receipts used to be the one and only option when it came to keeping track of your budget and finances. However, we are now in a time where everything is electronic and automatic. While it can be nerve-wracking to change an entire system in your field service business, the benefits that come from tossing the paper receipts and sending email invoices are huge.
So why should you get rid of the paper and switch to emailing receipts?
Bragging Rights
It is always a good feeling to show customers all that you and your guys can do for them out in the field. But why stop there? Customers appreciate ease and efficiency just as much as you do and will appreciate your company being so up to date and efficient. Emailing invoices gives you one more “service” to provide to your customers and excel at.
Not only do you get to brag about being high tech and an “up to date with technology” kind of business, you also have the right to be proud about being environmentally friendly. Printing invoices and receipts once is not the hugest deal. But what happens when a customer comes back with a mistake on their invoice? You have to reprint the invoice. And this could happen more than once on any given day with any given invoice.
Efficient and Effective
Depending on how you serve up your invoices, you are probably spending way more then you ever need mailing bills. Each invoice has to be printed on a piece of paper, sometimes carbon copy, which is more expensive. Then you have to stock up on your envelopes and stamps to send the invoice. Add in mailing labels, and you’ve got yourself a nice little budget built up just to send a bill.
With email, you get a chance to review the invoice before it is sent. You also have a pretty permanent record of invoices sent, because they are stored in your email account. Plus for added assurance, when you run your backups (because you are running frequent backups right???) you can add the invoices to those for more permanent storage.
Email is an effective way to ensure customers are getting the bills too. With mail, you risk the chance of a bill getting lost in the mail (or the customer claiming they never received the email). Besides a few spam blockers, you can be pretty positive that your email is getting to your client in a matter of seconds. Instituting an email invoice policy also gives you a good reason to collect email addresses, which you can later use for marketing purposes.
I still do not recommend allowing your techs to print invoices in the field because you should always review the bill before you send it off to the customer. But as far as emailing the invoices after they have been reviewed, I say go for it!
Sending an email is as simple as the click of a button. You are able to have all of the same information as your paper receipts, minus the paper cuts! Emailing invoices is a convenient, effective and environmentally friendly way to get the bill to the customer, and eliminate a lot of the hassle that comes with paper.