How e-invoicing can benefit your business

One concern for business owners everywhere is the recent growth in invoice fraud, so it’s important to take advantage of the technology that’s available to limit your exposure. One way of reducing your vulnerability to scammers is to use e-invoicing, a secure way to send and receive invoices that is backed by a government platform.

As well as protecting yourself and your customers from invoice scams, e-invoicing can also help you get paid faster, thus improving your cashflow. E-invoices are delivered securely to your clients, even across different accounting systems, and they replace emailed PDF invoices or links to online invoices.

Invoice scams are surprisingly common and can also be very sophisticated. For example, when it comes to intercepted invoices, everything might look exactly right, but the bank account number may have been altered. Should it happen to your invoices, your clients will think that they’ve paid you, but the money will actually have gone to a scammer. Separately, you might receive a notification from a supplier that their bank account number has changed, but in fact it’s not actually from your supplier, it’s fake, and your money is going to a scammer.

In the event of an invoice scam, it can be very difficult to get your money back. E-invoicing prevents this type of scam because the invoices travel directly from one accounting or payment system to another. By directly connecting suppliers with their clients, there’s no opportunity for scammers to intercept the invoices.

For Ben Case, owner of decimal+ accountants in Newmarket, it’s important to embrace new accounting technology, especially if it’s going to protect your money. ‘E-invoicing might sound pretty technical, but we can help you set up your accounting software to send and receive e-invoices immediately,’ comments Ben. ‘Online accounting solutions such as Xero are perfect for this, and they’re incredibly easy to use too. They also have numerous other benefits, including effective credit control and easily accessible management accounts.

‘That said, you can also switch to e-invoicing even if you don’t use an online accounting platform by signing up with one of the free e-invoicing enabled software providers. It only takes a small amount of time to learn how to use e-invoicing and once you have the hang of it, you’re protected from invoice fraud for good, so it’s well worth the effort.’

Decimal+ are accountants in Newmarket and Cambridge, so if you’re looking to switch to e-invoicing, please contact us for an initial discussion.