PDF Invoices (#42)
/In this podcast, we cover how to create a PDF invoice, and the advantages of doing so. Key points made are noted below.
PDF Creation Software
Today’s topic is PDF invoices. What this is all about is converting your customer invoices into electronic files. This is not scanning, which requires a little too much time, and also a flatbed scanner. What I’m talking about is buying a copy of Adobe’s Acrobat software, which you can get at adobe.com for $300. I also just checked on eBay, and you can get there for somewhere in the range of $200 to $230. Or, you can buy it on Amazon for $250.
Once you install it, the software creates a new printer called Adobe PDF. Then, when you want to create an electronic version of an invoice, just select the Adobe PDF printer, and the software creates an electronic version in .PDF format. This is a really common format, and most everyone has Acrobat Reader software that can access the file.
Advantages of PDF Invoices
Now, what’s the big deal with having PDF invoices? There are a couple of things. The primary one is that you can send PDF attachments in e-mails to any customers who haven’t paid their bills on time. When you do this, you avoid the time delay of mailing or Fedexing the invoice to the customer, and you avoid the risk of someone losing a fax. Instead, the customer has the invoice in their hands right away, and they usually forward it straight to their accounts payable staff, with an authorization for immediate payment.
When we first implemented PDF invoices, we had a major decline in overdue receivables, and also – maybe more important – we found that at least half of all overdue receivables could be handled with just a single e-mail, as long as they had that PDF attachment.
OK, that was the main item in favor of PDFs. But also, what if somebody in your company wants to include a cover letter with an invoice? This usually happens with really complicated invoices, where the customer is probably going to call you back for clarification before they pay. Now, you could just print the invoice and hand it over to the person who’s supposed to write the cover letter. The trouble is, people don’t like to write cover letters, so they may park the invoice in their IN boxes, and you’ve just lost the invoice.
But, by sending out a PDF invoice by e-mail, you can still keep track of the original, which is also a good reminder to follow up with the letter writer, to make sure that the cover letter is completed fairly soon.
So, there are some reasons in favor of PDF invoices. How about the mechanics of the creating them? I already said that the basic process flow is to select the Adobe PDF printer, and you’re done. But - there are a couple of other issues to be aware of. First and foremost, some accounting systems already have a feature built in where you just press a button, and it creates a PDF invoice. So, before you buy Adobe Acrobat, check your software to see if it has this feature. If it does, you’ve just saved a couple of hundred dollars.
Also, if you’ve already printed the invoice and now you want to create a PDF version, the accounting software may insist on printing the word “Duplicate” on the invoice. This may present a problem if customers don’t want to pay from duplicate invoices. A good way to get around this problem is to always create a PDF invoice on the first printing. And then, if you want a paper version too, then just access the PDF file, and print it from there. To make this approach easier to remember, set your printer default to Adobe PDF, so the system will automatically create the PDF file as soon as you hit the print button.
As you may have noticed from previous episodes, I will mention accounting products on this podcast, but I don’t specifically recommend them – you can figure out for yourself if a product will work for you, and you can decide for yourself if you should buy it. But in this case, I can’t state strongly enough that this is the one piece of accounting technology that has helped me the most – and it’s incredibly simple to use. And no – Adobe has not paid me to say that.