Construction business owners understand the importance of accurate billing. One of the biggest sources of construction business fraud is an improperly managed billing system—whether intentional or not. To avoid this unfortunate situation, it is absolutely necessary to streamline your billing process for better accuracy and accountability.
A robust time tracking and billing software will make it easy to track time, expense materials, create and send invoices and manage accounts receivables seamlessly. The following are seven reasons that a construction business should employ the use of time and billing software.
1. Save Time
The biggest hassle when choosing to bill for time and materials manually is the time it takes to manage the data in a spreadsheet. Once you have entered time, it is tedious to move that data to an invoice and then manage that invoice. The proper software will be easy to use and will take mere minutes to enter time and expenses. It will automatically generate invoices for billing, saving you more time. It will also have integrated timesaving features, such as automatically attaching receipts to invoices before emailing them to the customer.
2. Reduce Human Error
A helpful time and billing software prevents the possibility of any wrong timesheet entry that may happen in a manual system. All too often, money is lost because of incorrect capture of time through spreadsheets. Time and billing software prevent multiple time data entries by contractors or workers for any particular day, whereas a manual system may lead to multiple time entry and data duplication.
Additionally, you shouldn’t have to worry about workers forgetting to submit a timesheet. A useful feature of time and billing software is the automation of this process by sending reminders to fill out their time. There is an approval process that allows the construction business owner to approve or reject the timesheets and expenses before invoicing the customer in order to prevent any errors.
3. Get Paid Faster
Software helps remove the problem of irregular and late payments by customers, which often happens with manual or spreadsheet billing. The software allows you to send notifications and reminders to customers for timely payments. Also, if there is a direct link to a merchant gateway such as PayPal, customers can instantly pay the bill online using their own PayPal account or credit cards. This allows for a more efficient payment cycle and helps keep your cash flow healthy.
4. Increase Convenience
Presently, many time and billing software options are cloud-based, which means that it can be accessed from anywhere, including from the construction site. This is accomplished through the help of mobile apps for Apple and Android devices. With cloud-based operating software, you and your workers can enter time straight from a handheld device at the jobsite.
5. Monitor Cash Flow
With advanced reporting features, time-tracking and billing software will help you stay on top of your business. You can review and analyze the time spent on various projects to see how productive your workers are on the jobsite. This data can help in seeing if your projects are profitable and how many resources to allocate on future projects. Additionally, you can see which customers are late in paying their bills, so you can follow up with them before those bills slip through the cracks and your cash flow suffers.
6. Beat the Competition
The best time and billing software gives you the ability to create project estimates on the fly and email it to your prospects in minutes. This will enable you to beat out other competing contractors when it comes to bidding on projects. You can conveniently convert those bids into invoices once you win the customer’s business.
7. Gain Peace of Mind
Avoid the run around from your customers when they say they didn’t receive your invoice in the mail. With an effective software solution, you will not only be able to email the invoice to the customer, but also receive an email notifying you that your customer has viewed it. With a verified receipt, you’ll be able to tell when your customers are lying and follow up accordingly.
Billing has always been a pain for construction business owners, but it is necessary to get paid for services rendered. A well-structured time and billing software can take the headache out of billing and streamline your company’s accounts receivables to prevent any mistakes. Improperly managed accounts receivables, no matter the reason and whether mistakes are intentional or not, is the number one cause of construction business fraud. As such, it is wise to look for an easy and reliable time tracking and billing software that has the ability to accurately manage your business and streamline your cash flow.
