Digitally invoicing and managing accounts payable is a reality for today's business owners, whether you're a small, local family-owned business or an e-commerce giant selling thousands of dollars of inventory daily.
Although digitalization has come a long way, it has not yet alleviated all the problems associated with balancing the books, keeping suppliers happy, and ensuring optimal cash flow; Ask anyone with experience managing their accounts through Excel workbooks.
QuickBooks offers a range of basic accounts receivable and payable solutions to simplify many complicated processes. We'll look at how to use QuickBooks to send invoices and expedite payments, some flaws within the platform, and how third party integrations may intervene to save the day.
QuickBooks Invoicing – Accounts Receivable
QuickBooks is known for its wide range of features and tools, and its accounts receivable offerings are no exception. With the basic versions of QuickBooks, users will enjoy a range of easy-to-use tools. billing tools what includes:
- Customized and customizable invoices to keep your brand messaging up to date throughout your customer or customer's entire purchasing cycle.
- The ability to control cash flow by tracking billings in real time, including when they are sent, viewed, and (most importantly) paid.
- Integrated payment options including ACH transfer, credit cards, and even digital wallets, with third party integrations unlocking even more payment flexibility.
These all offer one main benefit: saving time by streamlining your workflows and, in some cases, automating manual work that also reduces or eliminates human errors that often occur when entering data by hand.
How to send an invoice with QuickBooks
As you would probably expect from QuickBooks, sending and monitoring invoices through the platform is a breeze.
- To get started, navigate to your Billing either Sales panel section, then click Create invoice.
- From there, you'll have the option to select an existing customer or create a new customer profile.
- You will fill out all the relevant information and have the opportunity to choose online payment methods (in this case, cards, bank transfer and PayPal are available) and set up an automatic invoice reminder three days before the due date, the due day . date and a late payment reminder three days later.
- Once ready, click Save either Keep and send if you are prepared for the client to receive your invoice. If you save the invoice, you can find it on the main page. Sales panel and send it later.
Before sending it, you'll have one last chance to review the invoice and even see the design from the client's perspective.
Invoice Processing with QuickBooks – Accounts Payable
Just like sending invoices and managing accounts receivable, maintaining your accounts payable directly through QuickBooks is easy. However, there are some critical shortcomings in the process that we'll address, as well as some recommended ways to smooth out those rough edges to keep your business running smoothly and optimizing cash flow.
To process invoices in QuickBooks, you'll first need the invoice itself, whether physical, emailed, or sent through another platform. You will migrate the invoice to QuickBooks by navigating to the Bills board and selecting Bills.
- Navigate to the Add invoice drop down menu and select Upload from computer (if sent by email or have a digital copy) (or)
- Create invoice if you have a paper copy or prefer manual data entry.
- Once ready, you will migrate all relevant information to the supplier's administrative fields and then Save the invoice or Save and schedule payment if you are willing to pay.
You will also have the option to make the invoice. newspaper if the supplier's goods or services are delivered according to a previously planned and agreed schedule without substantial changes from one period to another.
Gaps in the QuickBooks Accounts Payable Process
Even with the expert assistance of QuickBooks, managing invoices and expenses can be complicated. Common shortcomings that customers identify in their QuickBooks accounts payable processing include:
- Delayed or inaccurate invoice records due to manual processes can impact supplier relationships.
- Likewise, errors in manual data entry can cause devastating financial consequences if they go undetected.
- The lack of oversight and approvals within the native QuickBooks platform has led to fraud or, at best, misaligned spending within organizations without tight spending control.
Other common issues identified include a lack of early payment discount options and, in some cases, inefficient payment processes that come into play, primarily when dealing with international transactions and cross-border payments.
Of course, a range of automation tools and third-party integrations step in to save the day, one of which, Nanonets, offers a full-spectrum suite of accounts payable automation tools for QuickBooks that take the platform to the next level.
Nanonetworks for accounts payable (AP) automation
Nanonets offers a range of ai-powered accounts payable and document processing integrations that help turn QuickBooks into an accounting powerhouse. The back-end processes are complex, although the user experience is very simple, but in a nutshell, Nanonets helps automate accounts payable in QuickBooks by:
- Migrate and “read” invoices from a variety of sources, including scanned copies via optical character recognitionand then pulls the relevant data into your QuickBooks accounts payable.
- Automate payments based on your preferences, driven by extracted data, with accuracy as a key feature to minimize conflicts with suppliers and avoid payment issues.
- Supplier management tools, including onboarding features and customizable approval workflows.
The benefits of integrating Nanonets into QuickBooks are clear: users can save up to 90% of the time they would otherwise spend manually managing QuickBooks accounts payable through ai-enabled automation. Likewise, putting ai to work means fewer errors that can impact your company's cash flow and long-term growth goals.
How QuickBooks and Nanonets Work Together
You can quickly integrate Nanonets with QuickBooks without costly and time-consuming onboarding requirements – it's as simple as a few clicks. Once integrated, your Nanonets-enabled workflow will typically look like this:
- You will receive an invoice and migrate to Nanonets via API, email, or drag and drop from your local machine.
- Nanonets will automatically and accurately capture all the information and then send it to the first approver (if you configure your workflow rules and permissions to include approvals along the way).
- Once approved, which users can do remotely, Nanonets will match the invoice to an existing customer or create a new supplier based on the extracted data. Nanonets will then reconcile the relevant records in QuickBooks to ensure your accounting is up to date and accurate in real time.
- Nanonets will then create invoices ready for payment, which you can automate or release manually.
As you can see, Nanonets ai integrations turn dozens of steps into just a handful of automated processes that, in many cases, can run safely in the background. At the same time, you focus your time, attention, and efforts on the things that matter: growing your business.
Conclusion
QuickBooks offers a virtually all-in-one accounting and bookkeeping platform that's always popular for a reason. Although there is a slight learning curve, sending invoices and paying bills through QuickBooks is a simple process once you can navigate the platform's many dashboards.
Of course, that navigation and familiarity requirement comes at a price: your time. Worse yet, you can expect time spent on accounts payable to accumulate by manually entering data fields and manually reviewing an invoice from receipt to payment. For those interested in streamlining their accounts payable experience and supercharging QuickBooks, Nanonets' suite of automation tools saves time and energy while offering breathing room and flexibility to users managing their newfound freedom.
If you're ready to start your QuickBooks experience, Try Nanonets today free to see how much time you'll save.
