You’ve done the work, completed the project, provided the goods, and now you’re ready to invoice your client… so how do you want your customer to pay you? This is largely up to you, but it’s useful to think about what’s convenient for your clients, too. After all, the easier it is for them to pay their invoices, the better your chances of getting the money in sooner – which is good news for your cash flow!

Payment options for small businesses

There are countless payment methods that you can include as an option on client invoices, such as:

• Cash
• Cheques
• Online bank transfer
• Debit or credit card transactions, in-person, online, or over the phone
• Payment handling gateways such as PayPal
• Digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay
• A payment button if this is an option your bookkeeping software provides
• And beyond!

Is it better to offer more payment options?

Ensuring your clients can use their preferred method to pay you certainly has its advantages. Making it as simple for someone to send an invoice payment means they’re less likely to put it off, reducing the time and effort you put might otherwise need to put into chasing overdue invoices. Other positives can include:

• Customer convenience
• Greater spending power – especially if they rely on credit
• Business credibility
• Quicker transactions
• Opening up opportunities to interact with clients
• Reduces the risk of losing them to a more convenient competitor
• Having a back-up option if something breaks

What to consider before offering different ways to pay

Some payment handling platforms charge a subscription, so having a wider array of these might prove more expensive than necessary – especially if they’re only used occasionally. Lots of payment options can also result in needing to spend more time collating payment information into your bookkeeping. Offering tons of options for the sake of it might not necessarily be the best approach in that case.

It’s also important to keep your payment process as streamlined as possible. A daunting array of choice can put some people off – leading to those delays we want to avoid.
 

Which payment options are best?

Again, this depends on what you and your customers are comfortable with, but there may be other considerations too – such as the industry that you work in, or the kind of projects you’ll be involved with. For example, you might ask your client for:

• Full or part-payment upfront if the job involves buying a lot of materials
• Milestone payments at set intervals if it’s a longer project
• Online payments if you don’t want to manually handle large amounts of cash

 
Learn more about our online accounting services for businesses. Call 020 3355 4047 to chat to the team, and get an instant online quote.