AUTOMATION

Automatic invoicing: from accepted quote to invoice

All the details for the invoice are already in the quote. As long as someone retypes them, errors creep in and invoices are left waiting.

What goes wrong as long as it stays manual.

Turning a quote into an invoice by hand looks like ten minutes’ work. It goes wrong structurally in three places.

• Typing errors. A wrong amount, 9 percent VAT where it should have been 21, a forgotten line. The customer calls, you issue a credit note and invoice again.
• Delay. The invoice waits until someone has time for it. Every day it goes out later is a day later you get paid.
• Forgotten invoices. Without a list of accepted quotes that have no invoice, you can’t see which work was delivered but never invoiced.

How the step from quote to invoice works.

The principle: nobody retypes data that already exists. In four steps, it looks like this.

1. The approval is on record. Whether the customer signs digitally or agrees by email: set the quote to accepted in the system. From that moment it’s clear that it is final.

2. The quote becomes an order. Customer, lines, quantities and prices carry over one to one. This is also the moment to create a project or task, so the planning knows work is coming.

3. The draft invoice is ready. On approval or on delivery, that’s up to what you agree. Same lines, right VAT, right customer.

4. Someone checks and sends it. Always start with this check. You’ll see straight away whether it does what you expect.

One system or two?

One system if you can. If you make quotes and invoices in the same package, the step from accepted quote to invoice is usually built in already and you don’t need an integration.

Two if you must. If you make quotes in a costing tool because real calculation is needed, the integration between that tool and your accounts is exactly the piece you have built.

What you want to avoid: quotes in a word processor or spreadsheet. There’s nothing to integrate with, because no system knows when approval was given.

Send straight away or check first?

Check first. It takes half a minute per invoice and you quickly learn where the exceptions are. For recurring amounts, such as a subscription or a fixed monthly amount, the chance of a surprise is small. There you can consider dropping the check after a while.

When it doesn’t pay off.

If you send a few invoices a month and every job is put together differently, doing it by hand is fine. The same goes if quotes are mostly agreed verbally. Pin down the quoting process first, and only then the step to the invoice.

What TrompTech does here.

In TrompTech Layer, an accepted quote becomes an invoice in one click, with the same customer, description and amounts. That invoice starts as a draft. It only goes to the customer by email, with the PDF attached, once someone in your team has approved it. After that, Layer keeps track of the due date and proposes reminders. The Sales and Finance modules are included from the Core step, €895 a month.

Your accounts stay in your own package. If a costing tool or your accounting package needs connecting to the rest, that’s custom work: usually between €3,500 and €12,000, then €249 a month for management. All amounts exclude VAT.

TrompTech Layer starts at €399 per month, excluding VAT and with no setup costs.