Blog
Help For The Professional To Properly Charge Clients
There is nothing worse for your business than to realize that you are not properly charging all of your clients. You might not think this is a big deal at first, especially if you are the one losing money and not the client or customer. However, the entire point of being in business for yourself is to make much more money than you could ever make by working for someone else. Why would you allow yourself to continue to be short-changed?
It is even worse if you are not billing your clients or customers correctly. While some people may not catch a few cents difference, others will. Some may not care about a small amount of money, while others will complain and bash your company if they were overcharged a mere ten cents. The fact is, the customer or client would be in the right if they were to get upset over being overcharged. It is their money and they have a right to keep as much of it as they can and only pay the proper amount owed to any business that they are doing business with.
So what can you do? The answer is to make use of several different tips so you can make the most of your time:
Invest In Quality Software
There are a lot of different software options when it comes to keeping track of what you need to bill your customers or clients. If you happen to bill by the hour and have the need to break it down to the minute, then you might want to specifically look for business management software that will do just that. This is not something that you are going to be able to relax on. You need this software in order to keep track of every minute.
Of course, you could watch the clock on the wall or use a good old fashioned stop watch. The thing is though, not only can those methods cause you a lot of stress that you do not need, they may not provide you with the accuracy that you need. After all, do you really feel as though you will be able to work properly when you have to keep messing with a stop watch? It might end up becoming more of a distraction than it is worth.
Keep An Overview Record
You will want to take a little time to keep records that indicate what you do throughout each project, from the beginning to the end. This might seem like it is going to be a little time consuming. However, if you ever have a client that is trying to dispute, or simply question, why you billed for so much time, you will be able to easily explain the situation.
With a quick glance, you will be able to break down the basics of what you spent your time doing. Even if you have an excellent memory, it is important to make sure that you are doing this because as your company grows, you may find that you are trying to balance multiple projects at one time. You would not want for the details of each of them to get mixed up with one another.
Hire Some Help
If you find that keeping track of invoices and what you need to bill for is not really something that is within your field of expertise, you might want to consider hiring a professional to help you with that. You will be able to get the best of both worlds. You will be able to run your business and make use of skills that come from hiring a professional to help with your invoicing. This will also help to make sure that all of your business copies of your invoices are kept in a well-organized manner. You may need them some day if you were to ever become audited or need to reference them for a legal matter.
So what are you waiting for? Now is the time to get your business in order so you can make sure that you are never going to run the risk of overcharging your clients and customers. You will also never have to worry about missing out on any of the money that you earned because you failed to bill enough.
Comments