Many of your customers are probably still being a little bit careful with the money they spend, even though the economy seems to be picking up. Rather than paying a lump sum for your services, many of them might prefer to pay a percentage at a time. QuickBooks makes progress invoicing easy, giving you the freedom to accommodate your customers’ requests by billing them in segments, rather than all at once.
Present Estimates
Estimates are a great way to inform your customers about the total cost of a job, while allowing you break down the total into payments. Creating an estimate also helps them understand the bigger picture. Estimates are a beneficial Quickbooks feature because you can customize your billing based on the agreements you make with your customers.
Make Changes with Purchase Orders
No estimate is going to be 100% perfect. There are bound to be changes, such as your customer adding an item or deleting an item from the original order. To accommodate their requests, simply create a purchase order from the original estimate. This will make the necessary changes so that you don’t have to change the entire estimate itself.
Track with Reports
Although estimates are very helpful for both you and your customer, it’s important to keep up with them. Otherwise, they can become very confusing. As you begin using estimates as a regular part of your invoicing routine, Quickbooks’ reporting feature will help you manage them. On a monthly basis, you’ll be able to generate a report that is solely representative of your progress invoices. This report will be helpful because it will allow you to analyze your bookkeeping and billing practices to find what type of billing seems to be the most attractive to your customers.
Estimates are a great idea, however there are some cases when they’re not as beneficial for your invoicing procedures as others. Quickbooks training will help you understand when the best time to use them is, and it will also help you keep them organized when you do use them. For more information about our Quickbooks training courses, contact us today.
