In the IT staffing industry it is common to receive an interim payment and then get a final payment after the project is concluded. Since there is usually a large number of unresolved issues, the staffing firm and the customer keep delaying a final invoice processing that will put an end to the particular contract. In most instances, the staffing company turns out to be the loser, because they are unable to give shape to a final invoice.
Sometimes many months lapse and the staffing companies write off the residue amount that they will otherwise be able to recover upon presenting an appropriate invoice. It is not that the accountant is lazy or lethargic; they are mostly competent and professional but the manual methodologies that they have been using don’t help them to retrieve the essential information that is buried in paper files and computers. That there is no automated invoicing or centralized software repository makes writing a final invoice a gargantuan task.
Who Loses Without a Final Invoice?
In most cases, the IT staffing company will lose a substantial amount, because it is not worth the effort deputing a few accountants on the job. Besides, it can ruin an accountant’s current stockpile of work on which he may be sitting. Ideally all project-related invoices must be resolved and finalized within a week of concluding the project.
It should be plain as vanilla for readers to understand that when the IT staffing company fails to present the final invoice, the customer is happy to get a windfall profit. It is estimated that 67% don’t care to send the final bill that they should be pursuing. If a large number of invoices end up unpaid, then it will negatively reflect in the P&L account of the company.
How Procrastinating the Final Bill can be avoided?
One of the best ways to stop procrastinating the writing of the final invoice is by automating every process in the contracting-to-payment financial accounting system in the staffing firm. To automate invoicing processes, IT staffing companies are increasing using CONSULT. It is a valuable application that does not require any special installation by a software engineer or the procurement of expensive hardware; it is a cloud-based SaaS solution specially made for integration with QuickBooks.
CONSULT offers IT staffing firms a unique invoicing ecosystem in which every event – billing and billable rates, timesheets records, and project start/end dates, upfront receipt amounts, previous invoice details and unpaid amounts are curated and kept ready for instant retrieval. To curate, your accountant doesn’t have to make any special efforts; it is automatically executed with AI features built-in the solution.
When it is time to generate a final invoice (as against one already presented and part payment received), all that the accountant has to do is key in the appropriate invoice or project identifier and generate the final invoice in CONSULT. It is as simple as this.
CONSULT’s invoicing solution’s ability to curate has helped IT staffing companies to recover long forgotten payments effortlessly. It is an advantage that every IT staffing accounting department must have.
