Most businesses believe that the best way to bring in revenue is through new sales. While this is an okay philosophy it is as important to be paid for all invoices sent. In this article, we will be comparing the revenue management options of IsoEvolve and Xero.
The collection of debts is also vital when it comes to managing the revenue for your business. Debt collection is however a challenging and time-consuming endeavour. If your business accepts payments in forms other than cash. You need to set up debt collection practices to avoid cash flow issues. No matter the size of your accounts department, investing in software can reduce the employee input needed to manage invoicing and overdue payments.
Revenue Management :: Features
Customer Relationship Management.
The ability to manage all your client interactions in a single place is important. A good CRM solution will assist you by giving you a complete picture of the contact activity and history. You need to be able to view contact information, history of invoices, payments, bills, notes and emails.
Both Xero and IsoEvolve have built-in CRM systems allowing the user to have full access to the complete client history. The ability to connect your email to your CRM ensures that clients know where the message has come from. This is important for maintaining relationships with new and existing clients.
Invoicing and Billing
The most basic use of billing is to keep a record of all sales that happen within the business. You can create invoices using tools like Excel or Word, while these may be free, and easy to access. The cheapest option is not always the best for your business. Free templates aren’t professional and can b hard to customize. One small change causes the entire format to scramble. And you end up wasting time creating invoices rather than managing your business.
That is why most businesses opt to use accounting or invoicing software to automate the process of invoicing. With invoicing software all you have to do is upload your company information to the software, customise the template with your brand info and you are ready to invoice.
Xero has built-in invoicing features that allow you to create, edit and send invoices directly from your software to the client. Once the invoice is generated and sent, it is added to the client CRM so that you can track it.
IsoEvolve also has built-in invoicing features but tops that off with the ability to generate an invoice directly from the appointment in its built-in diary. This saves time and ensures that the correct invoice for the appointment type is sent. This works beautifully for healthcare practitioners and financial managers. Once the invoice is generated and sent, it is added to the clients’ profile so that you always have access to it.
Manage Payments Received
Once you have sent the invoice to your client, the next step is payment management. As you can imagine this involves capturing payments and allocating them to the invoice. In this day and age where proof of payment notifications can be manipulated. The best way to do this is to reconcile your bank statement. Or to offer direct online payments from your invoice.
In this aspect accounting software like Xero is superior to IsoEvolve. Xero has integrations with online payment gateways. This allows you to add a pay now button on the invoice. Making it easier for the client to pay you instantly. Xero also offers bank feeds, where it is checking your bank account daily and capturing the transactions. While this is efficient you do still need to reconcile the payments against this invoice. But at least you don’t have to go through the bank statement manually.
With IsoEvolve, you can upload your bank statement to the software and it will pull the transactions. Then it will match the payment reference to the client/ invoice reference and allocate the payment.
Manage Quotes
In many businesses, you need to be able to send a quote to a client. Once a quote has been sent who tracks it. To make sure the client gives the go-ahead within your stipulated timeframe. This is normally managed by the business owner or perhaps an office assistant. With software, you can quickly and easily manage quotes.
With Xero, you can easily prepare and send professional quotes to your clients. The client has the option to accept the quote directly with the integrated accept button. You can then mark the quote as accepted or record it as declined and why. The accepted quote can then be converted into an invoice and sent back to the client for payment.
With IsoEvolve you can prepare a professional quote and send it to your clients in a few clicks. The quote can then be stored in the CRM while it is awaiting approval. The approved quote is then converted into an invoice.
Revenue Management :: Debt collection
Debt collection is vital for the cash flow of any business. Making sure that a business collects on all invoices is important. But it is equally important to maintain good customer relations. It can be aggravating for a customer to receive a payment reminder notice before their invoice is due. It is just as damaging to a customer relationship if the company generates an invoice with mistakes.
Automating the collection process minimizes human errors in the payment tracking process. Your company will be less likely to generate duplicate invoices or misapply customer payments. Debt and payment tracking software collects all relevant information about customer accounts. So that nothing important is lost in translation between different employees working on the same accounts.
While Xero has amazing invoicing, billing and payment features it is first and foremost an accounting software. This means that it does not have built-in debt collection features. When it comes to revenue management we cannot forget debt collection and this is where Xero falls short.
IsoEvolve on the other hand has built-in debt collection functionality. This ensures that the software is tracking every invoice. From the time the invoice is sent the software tracks the payment terms. If the payment terms are exceeded the collections process kicks. This process is based on the rules and terms set by the business owner.
Conclusion
One of the most critical aspects of a company’s cash flow management and long-term sustainability is how effectively it collects on customer debts. Debt collection does not always get the attention and analysis that it deserves. You cannot manage a business’s revenue if you do not take debt collection into account.
While Xero is a powerful tool it is aimed at the accounting market rather than revenue management. Xero would work well with a separate debt collection software while IsoEvolve is a one-stop-shop. IsoEvolve has both accounting and debt collection features that allow it to handle the revenue management for a business. Using IsoEvolve can help a company reduce bad debt write-offs, collect money faster, increase efficiency and economy, improve profitability and maintain good relationships with customers.
At the end of the day, we firmly believe that revenue management software is vital for any private practice or business. Do your homework and pick the option that would best suit your needs. Remember that a great revenue management solution should help you to keep everything where it should be. And give you the business owner time to actually focus on what you do best, which is running your business.
For more information on Xero click here
For more information on IsoEvolve click here