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Invoices and payments

Keelin

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Starting my commercial business and wondering how I would create the invoices for realtors and companies. Should I stick to email or create paper copies as well? Also, how should I accept card, cash, and or check payments?
 
First off welcome to the forum and the industry.

We create our invoices electronically and either email them or provide a link to them in cases of using PayPal (not our preferred method btw). Ironically our accountant (my wife) likes to have a paper copy of everything so I print them out and put them in a Paid/Unpaid folder.

You accept whatever your clients ask of you which could be any and all of the above. We prefer check or cash but have a few clients who insist upon using a Credit Card. If we accept a CC we include an additional fee because it costs us more.
 
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I invoice both paper and electronic copies, I accept cash or CC - not many people understand checks much...they run that like the credit card which doens't work for me. I also charge a fee for CC because it costs more (processing fee).


It's ironic you say this. That shows how different a business be in different areas. I'd say 99% of my clients use checks. Keep in mind that I never see about 75% of my clients face to face so mailing a check is easy for them and they don't have to worry (as much) about identity fraud with not using a CC to make the payment. I still have the occasional client who walks into my office and pays cash (had one this weekend who paid in CASH in FULL before we even flew the aircraft LOL) but that's not the norm for me.

Also a lot of my clients of Corps/Org and we submit invoices to them and their A/P issue a check each month.
 
First off welcome to the forum and the industry.

We create our invoices electronically and either email them or provide a link to them in cases of using PayPal (not our preferred method btw). Ironically our accountant (my wife) likes to have a paper copy of everything so I print them out and put them in a Paid/Unpaid folder.

You accept whatever your clients ask of you which could be any and all of the above. We prefer check or cash but have a few clients who insist upon using a Credit Card. If we accept a CC we include an additional fee because it costs us more.
I invoice both paper and electronic copies, I accept cash or CC - not many people understand checks much...they run that like the credit card which doens't work for me. I also charge a fee for CC because it costs more (processing fee).

Ahhh ok guys thanks for the insight!
 
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I think this is the big difference haha, I deal with more...real estate, small businesses, personal people then larger corporations. (yet...I hope!)


The bigger fish are also the easier fish in terms of payments. As of last year I only had one client that was slow to pay (and by slow I mean months) and I sent her a certified letter in the mail and her FATHER sent me payment the next week. This year I have TWO clients who are slow-pay and they are both Realtors. These people LOL.
 
When a supplier payment needs to be generated, the recording of the invoice received from the supplier is approved and entered as an invoice into the accounts payable module in Oracle. Invoices can be entered prior to the date the check is to be produced. Based on the payment terms entered (for example, Immediate, Net 30) the invoice is selected to be included in the payment process, which is done overnight by RF central office. The payment process generates the check.
 
It seems to me that now we need to allow our customers to pay bills conveniently. You must learn how to use all payment systems and accept any payments, and naturally, be able to declare it correctly in the reporting tax documentation. Now credit cards are very common, and there are even articles with credit card comparisons https://www.greedyrates.ca/blog/best-credit-cards-canada-2017/, and if you do not accept credit card payments, you may lose a significant part of your income.
 
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I made my own template in Word and attach it to an email.

Keep in mind that not everyone has the programs (or even the right version) to be able to open your specific documents. It's smart to then Save/Print to PDF to make sure your clients can open/view your file attachment.
 
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Keep in mind that not everyone has the programs (or even the right version) to be able to open your specific documents. It's smart to then Save/Print to PDF to make sure your clients can open/view your file attachment.
Good point. I do save them as PDFs as a matter of course. I should have mentioned that.
 
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