First, we’re excited to announce that ZenCash has passed the 250 Million dollar mark in invoices under management.

That’s right, with nearly 1,000 customers added in our first year of operations, we are now actively helping customers get paid on over $250,000,000.00 in open invoices at any given time.

We couldn’t be happier that so many people have chosen us to help them get paid faster, and continue to look for new ways to make it even easier and more elegant.

Second, to manage that level of growth, we’re excited to have a new addition to our team.

Elaine O’Gorman is joining ZenCash as its president and chief operating officer. Elaine has deep experience in high-growth companies and the timing of her arrival is ideal as we get ready to unveil a series of new solutions in the coming months. (Stay tuned!)

If you’d like to read more about these milestones, you can find our press release right here.

Until today, your invoice follow-up was sent on beautifully printed stationary on thick card-stock, nudging your slow-paying clients and saying thanks to those that pay on-time. We’ve heard that while you love sending these notes and invoices because they make you look good and they get your invoices paid faster, you want the option to follow up over everyone’s favorite communication channel – email.

Today we launch email-based follow-up actions to active ZenCash users (that means you’ve enabled your action timeline and maintain valid billing information). Email-based follow-up actions are digital equivalents of our traditional print+mail actions, which means that you can rely on your customers receiving the same professional, positive impression from your ZenCash email actions as from our beloved thank you notes, reminders and invoices. We’ve also included the most important details about the invoice so they know exactly what to pay, like in the screenshot below:

There are several major advantages of email-based follow-up actions over our traditional print + mail actions:

1. They’re fast – of course – so you know your customer is getting your note or invoice on the day they’re scheduled, between the hours of 10am to 5pm Eastern Time.
2. They’re sent to all of the contacts on file for your customer to give you the best chance of connecting and therefore nudging the invoice toward payment.
3. They confirm delivery. Now you know when your customer has opened your note or invoice. As soon as your customer opens the email action (if they allow images in their email), we’ll let you know it’s been successfully performed, just like in the screenshot below:
   

4. They’re free

But there’s one limitation to email actions… for now there is a limit of 100 email-based actions per month. If you’re approaching this limit it means you should consider taking your receivables to the next level with ZenCash’s Managed AR Service, a tailored, serviced plan for your business (no action caps or limitations) for small to medium-sized companies.

ZenCash users have been asking for email-based follow-up for a long time, so this is an especially exciting feature launch for us. We know it’s going to be another amazing tool that makes ZenCash both a joy to use and an indispensable tool for small business owners.

Remember: the most successful AR strategies follow up with customers over multiple channels (phone, print, email) at regular intervals over the life of the invoice. Use your actions wisely.

Let us know how you use email actions and if you have any suggestions for improvement in the comments below.

Offload AR Tasks While Improving Cash Flow and Reducing Stress

The ZenCash Managed AR Service is the perfect blend of our elegant SaaS application with dedicated time from our AR professionals. The service allows you to offload all AR-related tasks to the experts—saving countless hours of your time each month, reducing borrowing costs and preventing lost revenues from non-collections.

Smart Companies Make Receivables A Priority

Most small and mid-sized businesses admit they hate dealing with unpaid invoices and usually the task suffers when things get busy. Don’t relegate your cash flow to “when you have time” – let ZenCash make it a priority and ensure you get paid, and paid on time.

• Improve Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) through consistent and proactive follow- up on all receivables
• Focus time and human resources related to accounts receivables and collections on more high-value activities
• Discover a more systematic way to manage collections, minimizing emotional decisions that can impact the process
• Create an audit trail with history of activities
• Improve brand value and client retention through consistent, timely, print, and phone communications
• Ensure tight controls over timing, messaging, and mode of follow-up so you keep the reigns while benefiting from ZenCash automation

Pricing and Sign-up

We are offering a limited number of Managed AR Service plans, starting with our current ZenCash subscribers. Pricing starts at just $499 per month.

Learn more here: ZenCash Managed AR Service

Our primary goal is to get you the money you’ve earned. After spending the last few months talking to almost all of our customers individually about their accounts receivables pain, we planned and built out some great new things for you—including our amazing new Receivables Dashboard. We are excited about what’s in store for this week’s release and for the future! But first, some numbers for you….

Receivables Management Study

One recent learning experience for us came through a study we conducted with our friends at Lab42. We asked them to survey 100+ small businesses who use cloud-based accounting systems and who have revenues of between $5 and $50 million. The topic: learn more about their business’ processes for managing accounts receivable, especially how much time gets wasted following up on invoices.

Here are a few of the key findings:

• AR is anything but a solo task. In fact, 40% of small businesses have at least 5 or more people involved.
• Of the companies surveyed, 36% spent 11-­40 hours per month on accounts receivable, 37% spent 41-­160 hours and 18% spent more than 160 hours per month.
• Of the companies surveyed, 74% had two or more full-time people engaged in receivables management, and 41% had more than 5 people regularly engaged in receivables management.
• Of the time spent on AR tasks, about half of it is spent either tracking and managing the process or printing and mailing invoices and reminder notes.
• Of the companies surveyed, 92% of invoices required at least one additional touch to get paid!

So, it is with this data that we bring you the new, elegant, Receivables Dashboard!

New: ZenCash Receivables Dashboard

We’ve built some pretty great tools for managing your AR, but we are constantly sculpting and pushing our products to new places as we learn from you along the way. One such learning is regarding the “first impression” inside the app—and specifically, how could ZenCash do a better job of surfacing the most important bits of AR data in one place.

I am excited to announce that today that we are bringing our sexy new dashboard to life!

At the top, we bring the most important metrics together: Average Days to Pay and your total outstanding amounts. Over to the right, you can see the total broken down into three buckets: Current (shown in green), Past Due (yellow), and Default (red).

Then, there is a three-panel chart that allows you to select one of the these three views:

Weekly receivables history

This shows you a week-by-week look at how healthy your company is from an AR perspective. So ideally, each week would show all “green”—and you want the trend to be more green over time, vs more yellow or red.

Outstanding invoices by due date

This shows a current snapshot of all outstanding invoices, plotted on a timeline by their respective due dates. So you can see with clarity the distribution of your accounts receivable. Are there a bunch clumped up on the left in red? Or are things mostly clean on the left side of the timeline and there’s just nice green ones near the right?

Payments by payment date

This chart reveals just the payment information for your business without regard to the underlying invoice date, due date, etc.

Section 3 provides two tables—one showing recent actions that have been completed by us and the one on the right showing upcoming actions. You will note that any actions that are performed in the current stage will show up in green, while actions performed when an invoice is past due will show up in yellow, and ones in default, in red.

Finally, one of our favorite parts of the dashboard is this last section—and not because we have some weird desire to highlight your problems, but because it’s healthy to know where your weaknesses are so you can tackle them head on.

Gallery of Debtors

(Best said out-loud and in a tunnel of some sort so you get an over-done echo) This section serves as a visual reminder of where your most challenging customers are—sorted either by the largest outstanding amounts, or by the highest days to pay. In both cases, we also show what percentage of your overall AR each customer makes up, helping you to see any possible concentration risk.

That’s it. We hope you enjoy it. Use it a bit and then give us some feedback. If you love it, tweet it. If you hate it, email me at bc at zencash dot com and tell me about it personally.

bc

What’s happening with these clients? In this blog post, we’ll talk about the most common reasons these balances persist and how you can get them to approach zero the next time you look at your report.

Billing Surprise!

The first reason is all about communication. Customers often suspend payments when a bill doesn’t jive with their expectations. A surprise is fun on birthdays and holidays, but never at billing time. If the amount that’s billed is higher than what the customer was expecting, then that can delay or jeopardize your payment.

If you’re new to the accounts receivable role, or are part of a newer business where invoicing is part of getting paid, billing with confidence and consistency is somewhat of a learned skill. Stay in communication with the client throughout your service period—especially if the bill or the project scope begins creeping up. Use a change order to gain the client’s approval for new costs that were not agreed upon in your original contract.

I had a client in Asia that wanted additional work done that was originally in the project scope but was cut due to budget concerns. I was already onsite, halfway around the world, when this came up. It would have been easy to just do it, but I held my ground, presented a change order, and it was not approved. This provided me with the ammunition I needed to say no to the extra work, and avoided all sorts of issues with billing.

Invoice Lost

Playing lost on a TV show makes for great drama, but having your bill lost is not the type of drama you want in your business. Often with billing systems that send invoices via email, invoices become innocent victims of your customer’s SPAM filters. In other cases, a billing address or contact might have changed and cause a billing disconnect..

A helpful invoicing practice can be to request confirmation that it has been received by the person at your customer’s office—i.e. the accounts payable contact, finance manager or other person responsible for payments. If that’s not possible or not appropriate for your business, the next best thing is to follow up about a week before each of your invoices become due to ensure there are no barriers to an on-time payment.

Can’t Pay or No Intent To Pay

In some cases, vendors can’t or won’t pay.

An effective credit process early on can help root out these vendors before you do business with them. If the amount of the bill is significant to you or your business, run a credit check before you do the work.

For commercial companies, check out Dun & Bradstreet, and for individual credit reports, you can go to Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.

If no report is available, it is common to request three trade references and a banking contact that can verify basic details about the customer before you start doing the work. In some cases, the best risk mitigation tool is to request that your customer pay 50 percent up front.

And be careful. I’ve had clients tell me stories that a new client’s deposit check bounced after the work was done. The solution to that is to make the client wait as long as the bank makes you wait.

Simply Forgetful

Perhaps your client has a lot going on. Small business owners are often in their forties and fifties, a time in life with a great deal of responsibility—children, aging parents, and their own business to manage. It doesn’t take much to overwhelm these people. A friendly reminder might be all that’s necessary to get your bill back on their radar screens.

Disapproval or Disagreement Regarding Deliverables

You strive to do a fantastic job for each client, but what happens when a client disapproves of the work you did for them? This, and other scenarios involving a disagreement about deliverables, can be a common reason for a payment’s delay and can represent can uncomfortable situation for both you and the client.

Most of us dislike confrontation, and we procrastinate rather than take the first step in the confrontation. Once you’ve discovered that the bill is late because the client is dissatisfied, you can make it easier on the client by inviting them to share their concerns— and then listening as objectively as you can. This will begin the dialog that needs to take place for compromise or settlement.

Make it common practice in your business to request feedback throughout each project (and especially at completion) to ensure your customers are happy with your work.

Approaching Zero

Making big gains in your accounts receivable balances won’t happen overnight. Commit this month to identifying a few key areas of weakness in your processes—and then take action. A few small steps each month might allow you to look up a year from now with a whole new outlook on your business.

Have other ideas that have helped you make improvements to your company’s AR process? Please share them!

Sandi Smith Leyva, CPA, is the founder of Accountant’$ Accelerator and a popular speaker and writer in the accounting industry. Find her at www.AccountantsAccelerator.com.

We do not yet know whether Sandy will have any effect on ZenCash and other websites that are hosted with Amazon. Still, we have chosen to take a number of precautionary measures to prepare and keep you updated through the storm should there be a disruption to ZenCash services.

This includes ensuring the virtual instances powering ZenCash are spread against multiple availability zones. Because data is spread across multiple zones, we do not expect any information loss or site downtime should there be an outage at one of the data center locations. We’ve also checked that our database spares and backups are updated, so all historical user data is safe. In case ZenCash is affected, the team has developed a recovery plan to get up and running as quickly as possible.

Finally, we’ve created a temporary site where you can go for status updates on ZenCash and the availability of our services: http://status.zencash.com/. Our engineering team will be updating this page regularly.

We will also be tweeting updates, so follow us on Twitter if you aren’t already.

As of approximately 2:30 p.m. ET on Monday, October 29, ZenCash is running normally. We will continue to monitor the situation closely over the coming hours and days.

To all our East Coast friends and customers, be safe!

Our engineering team worked to fully restore the ZenCash application, and as of 1:46 p.m. PT, the app is back up and running. To be cautious, we are continuing to monitoring the situation.

As far as we know so far no user data was impacted, but are researching the matter further.  We will post updates here as soon as we are able to confirm.

Update: All systems operational. No user data impacted.

Chronic Entrepreneur Disease

Being part of a startup requires a 110% commitment. It’s often the first thing you think about when you get up in the morning—and the last as you fall asleep. It’s more a disease than a career choice. I often correct someone that calls me a “serial” entrepreneur with the notion that I consider myself more of a “chronic” entrepreneur who only has some ability to control the disease that has controlled much of my career path for the last 15+ years.

So much effort and mental energy is wrapped up in getting things off the ground, big chunks of life can get put on the back burner along the way. In the name of the customer. In the name of the investors or the board. In the name of self, ego, passion or other internal fuel. It happens. I know that I’m not alone in this struggle, but still it’s not something I am proud of.  Moreover, I’m not claiming defeat—and in fact I think there’s hope.

The Antidote: Do more good.

Warby Parker's culture of giving (Image credit Esther Havens for Warby Parker)

When I think about the kind of company I want ZenCash to be, I am inspired by young companies like Warby Parker, TOMS Shoes and Saddleback Leather that make great products, generate returns for their stakeholders, and have “doing good” as a core value and part of their culture. In these cases, the “giving” is more external versus directly involving the employees, although I am sure that with further research we would uncover employee impact on many levels both direct and indirect.

For example, Warby Parker has a “Buy a pair, give a pair” program. Every time they sell a pair of glasses, they provide one to someone in need. I have had a chance to meet the founders of WP and have friends who have worked with them over the years who can attest to the sincerity and depth of their cause. It’s not just a veneer designed to make for greater television.

As a financial + tech startup we are in a slightly different spot. We don’t have shoes or glasses to give away—and giving away SaaS apps to needy kids seems a bit awkward. Nonetheless, my desire is that we create a culture of giving vs just checking the box to say we gave. So what to do?

Experiment: The 2-Day Investment Plan

So, to get “giving back” kick-started here at ZenCash—and started in a way that is more ground-up and driven by our team, I have proposed that everyone on the team take two days off each month. They will invest those days in others and in themselves—both are investments that I believe will pay large dividends. Let me explain….

Day One: Take a Day

This day is a day dedicated to you. It is for real, uninterrupted rest and relaxation. It should be self-guided, not driven by a friend or spouse. It should be for you. It should be somewhat rewarding and somewhat relaxing. Going on a big ride (whether Cannondale or Triumph) or spending a day by the lake or a day in the library—all fit the bill. It can be thought-provoking, prayerful or mindless. It can be related to language, music, art or farming. It just can’t be work and you can’t check email and five other forms of social media while doing it. Unplug and just reinvest in yourself. Don’t be like the guy at the concert that sees the whole concert from behind his camera phone.

Day Two: Give a Day

This is your chance to do something that is not about work, or about you, or about what your girlfriend wants you to do, or whatever. It’s your chance to make a difference in someone else’s life. It doesn’t have to be grand. It doesn’t have to be in Cambodia—but that’s cool if it is. It can’t be something you also do at work (i.e., no pro-bono development projects) and it should be something you can pretty much finish in one day. Most importantly it should impact at least one other person. It could be serving in a food kitchen or helping a friend move. It could be volunteering at your church or at a school. How to find such opportunities? Check the Internets!

One of my favorite kids from my recent Guatemala mission trip.

With a very small amount of research (I started with Volunteer Match) I found I could assist in caring for 60 rescued exotic cats including lions and tigers and cougars; or, I could tutor a child and help with homework; or, I could help with yard work and mowing for a local youth organization. There are probably thousands of needs within 20 miles of me as I write this.

The Day After: Share The Stories

The final piece of the plan is that everyone on the team has to share with the rest of us how it went. Did you invest the time well? Did it work out? Did you struggle finding something that seemed worthwhile? Did you enjoy it or hate it? Were you able to unplug for a day and just rest?

In Conclusion… 

Some will argue that we’re wasting time—and at an admittedly crucial stage of the company when we are still pre-break-even and working on all core parts of the business. Eleven employees times two days a month for just the next three months is a loss of 66 work days. This, for a startup that is burning candles at every end.

Will this investment pay off? I hope so, but we’ll see. I know we are not the first to give back or the first to encourage our employees to be involved, or the first to have a passion for making a difference.

We will post updates here in the coming months as we learn and grow through this process, so stay tuned.

Have your own story to share? Have ideas you think will help us improve our experiment? Please share in the comments.

The following is a guest post from Sandi Smith Leyva, the founder of Accountant’$ Accelerator and a popular speaker and writer in the accounting industry. Find her at www.AccountantsAccelerator.com.

As entrepreneurs, we work pretty hard getting work done for clients or delivering the goods for our customers, so we just expect to get paid for our work with no problems. But sometimes we have to spend precious time away from the core of our business on accounts receivable and collections, for a variety of reasons.

If you’re wondering how to minimize your time spent in these areas, then you’re in luck because there are many easy and quick things you can do. For those of you on QuickBooks, here are six ideas:

1. Manage by Exception

One way to save time managing anything is to manage by exception, which means to only look at what is “on fire” or “about to catch fire” in your business. The Aging Summary in QuickBooks is good for this, but even better with a little customization.

Find it by clicking “Reports” in the menu bar, “Customers and Receivables,” and “A/R Aging Summary.” Make a decision about when you want to be alerted to unpaid invoices by how many days old they get. For example, if most of your invoices get paid at the 35-day mark, then an invoice that goes 60 days needs attention. You can set the report to only show unpaid invoices over 60 days old so you can focus on those transactions. (Customize Report, Filters, Aging, >=, 60, OK.) Better yet, sort the report by highest dollar invoice to lowest, and you have the biggest unpaid invoices at the top of the list. (Sort by, Total, click the A/Z button to show highest to lowest.)

Memorize that report and make a point to look at it once a month to decide what further action you need to take on those invoices.

2. Make It Convenient for Customers to Pay You

In QuickBooks, it’s easy to customize your invoice using copies of the templates that are included in the software. It’s common to add your company logo, and often, that’s where the customization stops. But let’s go a few steps further so we can make your invoice shout “Pay me fast!” all over it. Here are a few ideas to do that:

• Provide a variety of ways that your clients or customers can pay you, and spell it out, step by step, how to do just that. On my invoice, I have several boxes: one for PayPal instructions, one that lets clients write in their credit card number and fax or email it back to me in a PDF, and one that describes how to make the check out and where to send it.

Provide customers with any tax information they may need. Complete a W-9 and convert it to PDF format so you’ll have it ready to go when you’re asked for it. Also make a box for your tax ID so it’s immediately available right on every invoice.

3. Invoice Fast

If the job is done on the fifth, why wait until the 30^th to get paid? In QuickBooks, you don’t have to. Once any related time and costs are entered, you can create an invoice whenever you want to. If your client is happy with your work, it just makes sense to benefit before that post-project afterglow wears off.

Of course, you can also keep the feeling of gratitude going by sending a ZenCash thank-you note to clients when the project is complete.

4. Use Notes

I’ll tell you a dirty little secret if you promise not to tell anyone. We use one of the custom fields in QuickBooks to alert us which customers have return histories. If you have a large number of clients, this could be handy information for you too.

You can also use Notes to track customers who have a history of late payments, arguing about the bill, and so on. The Notes will help you determine what that customer is costing you in terms of collection time and trouble, and you can make a smart decision (with less remorse) about letting that client go.

5. Go Green

Go green by sending invoices via email. They’ll get there faster that way versus sending them snail mail. To do this, create the invoice in QuickBooks and then check the box on the bottom left of the invoice that says “To be emailed.”

Be careful of two areas where I have made mistakes in the past that have caused me to get paid late.

a) Be sure to enter the right email address. (Once, I sent an invoice to a doctor instead of his accounts payable staff.)

b) Understand that sending invoices via email (and also printing them) is a two-step process. Once you’ve created invoices and saved them, go to the File menu, “Send Forms,” and “Invoices” to complete the delivery process.

6. Use Statements

The statement is a great tool for your customer, and some customers will have their bookkeepers reconcile it each month, which is a good thing for you. It also helps to reinforce the collection of finance charges on overdue invoices.

Try these six tips to manage your accounts receivable better in QuickBooks.

Are repeated email reminders not getting your “please pay me” message through? How about 30, 60 and 90-day invoices, or repeated weekly phone calls?

In our experience, sending one type of message again and again won’t get great results. Why not? Because:

It’s easier to miss. What if your customer rarely checks email? Or hates talking on the phone? Or has a sleepy assistant managing their paper mail? We had one ZenCash user tell us that his customers sometimes have thousands of suppliers to pay – an email reminder just doesn’t cut through the noise.

It makes excuses easier. Customers have a ready way to explain away non-payment: “Gee, I never got that invoice.”

It may not be LOUD enough. The best collections and AR people know that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” The trick to getting paid is making sure your invoice rises to the top of your customer’s accounts payable stack.

That’s why ZenCash offers a full range of follow-up tools to help you get paid. Sure, other companies may focus on just one tool, like email reminders. That does make follow-up easier for you, but it doesn’t address the essential other half of the equation: making sure you actually get paid.

This brings us to the 2012 Document Management study from the Institute of Financial Operations. The study shows exactly why using many approaches is the key to success in accounts receivable. The IFO talked to accounts payable and receivable personnel in the corporate, government and nonprofit realms, asking them specifically about print invoices.

A few gems from the study:

• 83% of respondents admitted to losing between one and 225 invoices a month
• 2% said their workplaces lose between 226 and 350 invoices a month
• Only 15% said they never lose invoices

This tells us a few things: First, digital payments may be rising, but a lot of businesses still prefer to get printed paper bills. This is why we’re huge fans of printed invoices here at ZenCash. We physically send them out on our customers’ behalf, and they’re a central piece of our business. Second, there are a whole lot of misplaced invoices out there—and one (or more) of them may be yours.

Our recommendation? Add new follow-up methods to your accounts receivable mix. If you normally send print invoices, send an email or pick up the phone now and again. A friendly discussion may be exactly what’s needed to make sure your invoice is the next one paid.

And if we may humbly suggest it: try ZenCash. That’s why we’re here: to help you use every possible tool to get paid.

Read more about the IFO study.

Photo credit, kozumel