Have you ever worked out how many hours a year you spend on invoicing? Finding a template, typing in the customer’s company details, calculating VAT by hand, copying the account number… For a sole trader who issues, say, three invoices a week, the hours of admin quickly add up over a year. Online invoicing tools cut this time to a minimum.
An invoice in a minute, even from your phone
When did you last issue an invoice in less than a minute? With an invoicing app, this is not an exaggeration but reality. You save your customers in an address book and next time you invoice, you just pick them from the list. Items you invoice regularly go into a price list: you simply select them and the program fills in the price and VAT rate for you.
The document number, variable symbol and due date are all set automatically by the program. And if you are entering a customer for the first time, you just type in the business ID number (IČO) and the program fills in the details itself from the ARES register. No more copying out the company name, address or tax ID (DIČ).
Invoicing apps also take into account that you do not always have a computer to hand, so they let you invoice straight from your phone. You can easily send a few invoices between a coffee and a slice of cake at a café.
Enter it once, use it a hundred times
The biggest time-waster in manual invoicing is repetition. The same customer, the same items, the same payment details, and yet you have to fill them in again every time. Invoicing apps solve this in several ways.
If you invoice regularly (for example, a monthly flat fee for website management or rent for a flat), you set up a template and the system issues and sends the invoices automatically on the day you choose. You no longer have to think about it.
For customers who order similar things repeatedly, you can create an invoice by copying the previous one and changing just the date and, if needed, the quantity. The whole process takes a few seconds.
No more checking payments by hand
Do you check your account several times a day to see whether the money has arrived? With an invoicing program linked to your bank account, there is no need. The system recognises the incoming payment itself and marks the invoice as paid.
If a client does not pay on time, they receive an automatic reminder, without you having to deal with anything or send awkward emails. Meanwhile, you can focus on more important work.
Fewer mistakes = less correcting and apologising
Speed and accuracy go hand in hand. When you copy data by hand, mistakes are inevitable: a typo in the account number, the wrong VAT rate, a forgotten business ID number (IČO). Every such mistake costs more time: correcting the invoice, sending it again, waiting for payment. And apologising to the client as well.
An invoicing app prevents mistakes by filling in details automatically from registers and the price list. And if you ever do issue an incorrect invoice, you can create a corrective credit note in a few clicks.
Try convenient invoicing for yourself
The popular Czech invoicing program iDoklad offers full access to all features free of charge for 60 days, with no payment card required. Try creating an invoice for free with iDoklad and work out how much time invoicing really takes you now and how long it will take with the program. You can then keep using the free plan, limited to 5 customers, or switch to a higher plan.
The time you save on invoices is time you can turn into more work. Or simply keep it for yourself.
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