3 OpenAir Features That Will Improve Your Invoicing – For You And Your Clients

Invoices are an essential part of any professional services organization. But not just because it’s the mechanism by which you get paid, it is also an important representation of your business. For some customers, it might be the only document they see from you with regularity. How you handle invoices says a lot about how you manage your business.

They also have importance for your business, of course. Invoicing is a crucial process, but can eat up a lot of finance’s time. For OpenAir users, though, invoices can be streamlined, simplified, and serve as a source of reporting data, using a few tricks implemented in the solution.

Clarity with Invoice Numbering

Invoice numbering is meant to provide a means for you and your customer to have a common reference point. If a customer calls to question an item from their invoice, it’s easier to give a number than expect the finance team to dig through past invoices to figure out what they are talking about.

But something as simple as the numbering used can look more customized to a client and simplify your team’s access and review of invoices. Obviously, for invoice numbers to be useful, they must be unique. OpenAir ensures this by automatically assigning sequential numbers. But if Team A has invoice 100, and Team B working for a completely different customer has invoice 101, the numbers don’t mean much and can cause confusion.

OpenAir’s solution for this is the ability to add prefixes to invoice numbers. As the name implies, it’s a code that is prepended to the invoice number that can indicate the customer or the project. OpenAir’s configuration allows for either of those to be used.

For companies that wish to tag invoices by a customer, a prefix can be defined in the Billing Information tab of the Customer Record. Within this screen, a prefix can be set in the Invoice Prefix textbox. You can set this prefix to almost anything:

• Geography: e.g. Global destinations, like NA for North America, or a two-letter state code
• Customer or internal department: e.g. ACT for accounting teams, INTG for Integrations teams, etc.
• Customer designation

The thing to watch for her is each customer can only have one prefix. So, you’ll need to think through how your billing is structured to find the right tagging for your business. Be sure to add a dash at the end of the prefix, so that the invoice number is separated from the defined code.

You may find that adding a prefix at the project level is better suited to your business and billing structure. OpenAir makes it possible to add a prefix by project, as well. This feature requires setting an internal switch and a custom field on the project itself. Prefixes must be a three-letter code – no more and no less.

The prefix is applied after invoices are generated as you normally would. Once the invoices are approved, use the Run an Action feature of the invoice module. Select the invoices that you would like to have the prefix added to, and then select “Apply incremented invoice number(s)” to have the three letters and a dash added to the selected invoices.

Retainer and Pre-Payment Management

Retainers and pre-paid items are common in professional services, but managing them in invoicing can be a challenge. Again, OpenAir has a few different ways to approach this. One way to do this is to send clients a $0 invoice with the bill rate being $0 until the retainer funds have been depleted.

Another way that brings visibility to the client on their retainer burn rate is to utilize the Retainer feature. Using the Retainer Tab in the Invoice Module, create the retainer amount. From there, invoices can be created that shows the rate for the work done, and that amount is then subtracted from the configured retainer amount. This provides the client with a view of their remaining balance from their pre-paid amount.

Invoicing Around a PO

The Customer PO/Agreement functionality is another customizable feature of OpenAir that can improve the appearance, functionality, and efficiency of your billing. Decisions like where a PO is shown on the invoice – it doesn’t have to be in the header – and grouping invoice items by PO are possible within the solution.

Using the Multiple Invoice Creation feature allows you to split your invoices by customer PO. While some customers like to see all work and POs in a single invoice, others prefer to receive separate invoices per PO. To do this, within the Multiple Invoice Creation form, there is a prompt to create a new invoice for each different listed type and includes things like user and agreement. One of the boxes is Customer PO, and checking that will automatically generate individual invoices for each of the POs used.

Invoicing is far more than a necessary evil. It can provide clarity and insight about clients and simplify finance and reporting tasks. Having clean, understandable invoices, delivered promptly, reflects well on your company. By leveraging these tips, you can improve your invoicing process for both you and your customers.

These tips are just the beginning, however. There are many more tricks you can use with OpenAir to address a wide variety of invoice challenges – including expenses and receipts with invoices, customizing invoice messaging, dealing with retainers for a specific project, adding billing codes, and so on. For more information on invoicing best practices and tips on using OpenAir efficiently for invoicing, check out our webinar, OpenAir Invoicing Tips and Tricks.