Many service providers and small businesses have been moving away from doorknobs and paper slips to online invoicing systems. Not only do many of these systems automate invoicing and reminders, they also notch up the professional image of the service provider. While this level of automation works great for medium and large businesses, as a service provider playing solo, you need to be mindful of the perils of extreme automation on your relationship with your customers. The difference comes from the fact that in addition to the professionalism and quality of service, your business rides on your personal relationship with your customers.

For instance, say you are a yard care provider and one of your customers has some outstanding dues. You bump into this customer during a service visit and the customer apologetically tells you that the check in the mail. That night your super efficient invoicing system sends out an automatic 30 day overdue reminder to this customer. This reminder would not serve any purpose other than notching down your personal relationship with this customer. Instead of sending a reminder, another thing you could have done is added the overdue balance in next month’s invoice. Along the same lines, what would you do if there are five overdue invoices to the same customer; would you send five separate reminders, or compile them and send a single one. These are small things that have a potential to inflict big dents.

Unlike large corporations, solo service providers carry a human face to themselves, and this aspect has got to be reflected in all the communications between service providers and customers, including the invoices and reminders. If your invoicing system is making you myopically manage your invoices while jeopardizing your customer relationship, it is time to change the way you are using it, or to look for some other system. The efficiencies of extreme automation can be hurtful too. Make sure that your invoicing system helps you take a holistic perspective towards your relationship with your customers.

As some of you may have already noticed, we’ve made some changes to the site recently. If you look closely, you might have realized that we’ve officially left the beta stage and are now fully live with Simplifythis.com! It’s the easiest way to invoice your customers and get paid online.

One of the biggest changes is the new overall look and feel of the site. Hopefully, the first thing you’ll notice is that we updated our logo and branding. We’ve circled the wagons to re-assess our branding, and this new logo and overall color palate is the result! We’re very excited about it.

We’ve also removed a lot of the text on the main page in favor of a few screen clips that quickly communicate what we’re all about. Hopefully from the images below, you’ll understand that we are all about online Invoicing, Payment and Auto-billing, all of which help you Get Paid Faster.

In addition to the new look and feel of the main page, I mentioned that we are “now LIVE”. What does that mean? It means that we’ve spent a lot of time talking with many of you who’ve been using the beta, and rolling your feedback into the product. Your feedback and support has been invaluable, and we really appreciate it. However, as I’ve said in the past, the need to pay the bills has become more of a priority than continuing to offer a free service. With that in mind, we’ve now moved to a monthly subscription model, that includes a free option as well.

Of course, if you’ve been using the product during the beta program, we’ll grant you an additional 6 months of free service.

The final big piece of news that I have today is that one of the features many of you have been asking for during the beta was the ability to automatically bill your customers. As you saw above, we’re proud to announce that we’ve added an Auto-Bill feature! The feature basically lets you specify one invoice “template” for each customer that includes a set of line items, and the frequency to bill the customer. The great part about this feature is that if your customer incurs other charges during the month, these charges will be picked up and placed on the auto-bill (assuming you enter them as Unbilled Charges.) Try it out and let us know what you think.

As always, expect us to continue adding to the application as you provide feedback, and look for more new things in the coming month or two. Also, as you have questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to contact us — that’s why we’re here!

Labels: SimplifyThis.com

Thanks to everyone who took the time to provide feedback in the Beta survey we sent out not too long ago. We’ve received tons of great feedback, some of which has already made it’s way into the product.

I also wanted to let everyone know to keep your ears to the ground, because we have a pretty major update on the way, including one major feature that many of you have been asking for. I’ll keep the details under wraps for now, but expect something soon!

In the meantime, feel free to send us email if you have questions, feedback or just all around good vibes to send our way.
(photo courtesy of: net_efekt)

Labels: SimplifyThis.com