Tag: Money

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Tip of the Week: How to Improve Your Invoicing Processes

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One of the most important considerations in any business is to ensure that payments are properly received and processed. Otherwise, you may as well not be in business at all. To help expedite this, we’re dedicating this week’s tip to creating a better, more effective invoice. Let’s get into it.

How to Create Your Invoice
First, you need to have some way to actually construct the invoice document itself. For this, you have some options. If you use Microsoft Office products, both Excel and Word have templates you can use to put it together, and G Suite users can leverage any number of integrations to do the same. Alternatively, there are many software titles out there that offer more specific functions based on need and preference.

Once you have selected your software, you can start to put your invoice together. You will want to be sure that your invoice includes the following information:

  • Description – You want to be crystal clear on your invoices about what you are billing for, especially if part of it refers to time spent rendering a service. This will allow you to properly bill your clients while allowing them to understand exactly what they are being billed for, cutting back on how often your invoices are contested. Overall, every invoice should include the order number it refers to, the total amount owed, how the invoice can be paid, and when payment is due.
  • Discount Details – If you are offering any discounts, you will also want to make sure these are clearly annotated on your invoices as well – especially for those who are first signing on to your services. Otherwise, these discounts may confuse your clients and instill a false expectation for the future – creating surprise and frustration when the discounts are gone later.
  • Schedules and Policies – Just as you were held to a schedule to deliver your service, your client needs to be held to a schedule to pay for it. Consistency will also help your client prepare their payments on time. On a related note, your invoice should thoroughly explain your company policies on discounts, late payments and associated fines, and due dates to make your expectations of the client very clear.

Of course, this isn’t everything that can, or should, go on your invoices. However, these aspects are crucial enough to be mentioned and detailed separately. You should also consider other elements to include on your invoice, making use of what would otherwise be blank space. You may consider adding a more personalized touch and suggesting the next steps that a client should take, based on the services you are billing them for.

Furthermore, add some more of a personal touch by including some kind of thank-you message on the invoice. Write up a brief piece thanking your client for their business and have it printed on the invoice. Not only is this a visible way to earnestly say thank you, the appreciation you show may help to expedite payments and encourage repeat business.

When and How to Distribute Your Invoice
If you want to receive your payments on time, how you send your invoices is just as important as how they look. First and foremost, they need to be sent much sooner than later.

If yours is like many businesses, you may have found that your invoices go unpaid for long stretches of time. Estimates put the total of unpaid invoices to small businesses at well over $800 billion, and that was back in January of this year. This is why it is crucial that your invoices are distributed efficiently – it may be a long time before you get them back.

This is another reason that technology solutions are useful tools to assist you in managing your invoices digitally. Most invoicing software will likely enable you to track the status of the invoices you’ve sent.

If you want more assistance in managing your invoices, reach out to COMPANYNAME. We’d be happy to assist you, all you have to do is call PHONENUMBER. In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to our blog for more useful technology tips and advice!

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Unpaid Invoices Were a $825 Billion Problem Last Year

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Businesses exist to make money. Regardless of what that money is intended for, be it to sustain someone’s lifestyle or to bankroll a cause, a business will cease to be without an incoming cash flow. Unfortunately, unpaid invoices can make that cash flow stutter and slow to a trickle, and many businesses experience this problem as billed money doesn’t come in.

This presents those who rely on a small-to-medium-sized business to make a living, from the CEO to the employees, with another problem. How can they be paid if the business isn’t receiving its payment for services rendered until 30, 60, or even 90 days later? Many industries have begun to make these their typical payment terms.
Resultantly, businesses have found it difficult to continue their operations without the financial inundation from their current clients. You may have encountered this kind of issue yourself.

If so, you are not alone by any stretch. Estimates attribute 5% of the entire national gross domestic product to unpaid invoices, with the average small business waiting to be paid around $84,000. 81% of these invoices are past due by 30 days, which is especially bad when one considers that the average small business only has 27 days of capital saved up and available to them.

All in all, estimates put the total amount owed to small businesses due to unpaid invoices at $825 billion.

Even without taking that sum into consideration, this is a clear issue that many businesses face whenever their invoices are not answered in a timely fashion. If these businesses don’t have any funds to spare beyond what is needed to stay in business (assuming they have even that), how will they ever make the improvements they will need to stay competitive? How many projects have you abandoned halfway because it caused too much financial drain?

While it may seem to make no sense to invest your much-needed capital after we’ve just announced that your company may fail without it, there is a simple way to save your business money as you work to get what you’re due. With managed services from COMPANYNAME, your capital spending on your technology management can be transferred into a predictable, and budgetable, consistent schedule. We can also provide you with the solutions to help you track who is repaying their debt to you, and who isn’t.

Call PHONENUMBER for more information.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Swipe With Care: Your ATM Might Be Controlled By A Hacker

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One of the most enticing credentials that hackers desire is your credit card number, along with its expiration date and the code on the back. Hackers are also willing to go great lengths to achieve their goal of stealing these credentials, even so far as to make physical changes to automatic teller machines (ATMs) to do so. In fact, hackers will often install skimming devices on ATMs that are so subtle that they can be difficult to detect.

Take, for example, this news article from July 2017 that showcases a rather specific case of ATM skimming. The device in question simply slips over the ATM card reader in a discreet way to give the user the impression that they are using a legitimate machine. Any unsuspecting user could accidentally throw their credentials right to a hacker.

Furthermore, there have been cases of hackers implementing custom hardware into ATMs designed to harvest credentials. These devices are often installed onto ATMs so that they can wirelessly transmit credentials, to perpetrators lurking nearby. Either way, the result is the same; stolen credentials and upset victims.

Imagine waking up, checking your bank account, and noticing that you’re missing the entirety of your checking account balance. Or, even worse, finding out that your account has sunk into the red because someone in a foreign country has purchased your information and used it for their own purposes. How can you keep this from happening to you? The easiest way is to be wary of ATM skimmers in the first place. You should keep the following in mind when using an ATM.

  • Cameras surrounding the machine: If you are in an area where there are plenty of cameras, there will be less of a chance that the ATM will have been tampered with. In fact, most ATMs actually have built-in cameras, but it helps to have some extra caution to take a look around whenever you want to use one.
  • Tampering with the device: Examine the device before you use it. Are there any issues with the way it looks? Are any faceplates removed or devices plugged into it? If there are, you know that it’s not a machine that you can trust.
  • Additional “testing”: Before you insert your card into the device, try jostling the slot to see if it’s something that was artificially placed over the actual reader. Carefully inspect the machine before you insert your card. Spending a few moments to check the device before using it can save you a whole lot of pain in the long run.

What are your thoughts on ATM skimmers? Are you confident that you can identify one that has been tampered with? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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Banks Enact New Security Solutions to Safeguard ATMs

b2ap3_thumbnail_atm_best_practices_400.jpg All across the United States, banks are rolling out ATM improvements to help boost the security of their members by utilizing mobile devices. While these measures will undoubtedly help, they aren’t enough to fix all of the vulnerabilities that ATMs suffer from without some vigilance on the user’s part.

What is Being Done
Wells Fargo launched an initiative that allows their members to access their accounts via automated teller machines, without the use of their ATM cards. By utilizing the bank’s mobile application, an account holder can receive a temporary code that will grant them access to a Wells Fargo ATM when paired with a personal identification number.

While Wells Fargo is the first bank to incorporate app-based access to all 13,000 of their ATMs, other banks aren’t far behind. Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup have also begun to incorporate similar functions into some of their ATMs.

This isn’t the end of improvements to Wells Fargo’s ATMs, either. Wells Fargo is making the necessary additions to allow members to utilize near-field communication (NFC). By doing so, bank members won’t even need their card to access the ATM. Instead, their mobile device prompts them to scan their fingerprint and enter their pin. So far, about 40 percent of the bank’s ATMs are equipped for this functionality.

Why These Advancements Might Help
Advancements like these are sure to help boost the user’s account security while they utilize these machines to handle their finances. Criminals have been getting more clever in their schemes, and it shows. There were six times as many ATMs that were compromised in 2015 than in 2014.

Scammers now use spy cameras and card skimmers in tandem to collect the information they need to gain access to a bank member’s accounts. These skimmers are able to be inserted directly into the ATM’s card reading mechanism, where it is almost impossible to detect their presence. The same can be said of the pinhole cameras that criminals will use to capture a user’s PIN number. These tiny devices are remarkably difficult to spot.

Worse yet, criminals will often damage machines that don’t have their devices inserted, forcing users into their trap. If you see a row of ATMs with only one in working order, it’s best to give that one a pass.

If you think that a user is safe if they were to use a chip-based card, rather than the magnetic strip, you’d be mistaken. Much as they capture the information from a card’s magnetic strip, scammers have a method to do the same with the card’s onboard chip. Known as “shimming,” this approach is rare but will likely only increase in popularity as more transactions are made with the chip functionality. Plus, these chip-based cards still have the magnetic strip as well, tempting many to swipe away their security.

A Few Issues That Remain
Unfortunately, there are still factors that make ATM machines an effective vehicle for scammers. First of all, many of these new security features were added to the ones already present in the ATMs, rather than replacing them. For instance, while Wells Fargo ATMs will permit the use of a temporary PIN, they will still allow account access through the less secure methods as well. Not to mention that out of a total of 70 million members, there are only 20 million Wells Fargo app users. This means that there are 50 million bank members who aren’t even using the features.

This is assuming that those 20 million app users will make use of them, anyways. Habits are hard to break, so many account holders will likely continue to carry and swipe their ATM cards, despite having a more secure way to access their accounts.

What Should You Do?
Whether you’re dealing with the accounts for your business, or your personal finances, keep security in mind whenever you happen to use an ATM, and take advantage of the improved, more secure processes that are available to you. At the very least, shield your PIN number with your other hand as you input it into the machine.

Is it worth potentially allowing a criminal to access your (or your business’) accounts? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!