How much time does an SME lose chasing invoices?
Preparing, sending, following up: chasing unpaid invoices costs hours every week, often to the owner. What we measure, and what automation changes.
An invisible cost because it is fragmented
Chasing an invoice never takes long. Five minutes to check the due date in the invoicing software, five to find the right contact, ten to write a polite but firm message, and a few days later as much again to check whether the payment has arrived. The problem is not the length of one reminder, it is their number and their dispersion: they slip in between two meetings, in the evening, on Friday. In a ten-person company, it is almost always the owner or the person in charge of admin who handles them.
How to measure yours in one week
Three steps are enough to move from impression to figure.
1. List the overdue unpaid invoices to date and the number of reminders already sent for each. Your invoicing software gives this in a few clicks.
2. For one week, note every reminder action with its real duration, preparation and checking included. A simple notebook will do.
3. Multiply by the number of invoicing weeks in the year, and value it at the hourly cost of the person doing it. Add the cash-flow losses from late payments, if you know them.
The result almost always surprises: it is not the hours that strike, it is their concentration on the best-paid people in the company, at times when they should be doing something else.
What automation changes, and what it does not
A reminder automation reads the due dates in your software every morning, prepares messages suited to how late the payment is and to the customer's history, then presents them to you for approval. You read, adjust a tone, remove the customer you spoke to yesterday, and approve. Sending, follow-up and the record of every action are done for you.
What it does not change: the decision. No reminder leaves without your approval, and the difficult customer remains a human conversation. That is what makes automation acceptable to your customers, and compliant with the European framework that requires human oversight of the actions that matter.
Our own figures
Agilitia uses its own automations. The “Usage and productivity” counter on our home page measures, month after month, the hours given back to the team and the number of tasks executed under human approval, for a cost of a few tens of cents per hour saved. Invoice reminders contribute every week. We will publish our customers' measurements as soon as they allow us to.