The way ‘finance’ + ‘technology’ has amplified organized work schedules and growth opportunities for businesses in India has been phenomenal.[1] Fintech is evolving as financial software companies have been able to serve businesses with end-to-end finance management solutions.[2] On the other hand, for businesses, today, producing items, delivering services and making sales are not enough. They need to ensure a good customer experience which demands tons of productive hours. Nonetheless, mundane tasks such as accounting, bookkeeping, payroll management, etc hold back the maximum work tempo. Amongst many, invoicing and billing are not so exciting when it comes to business finance management chores. Yet, they are the most crucial ones. Despite a myriad of accounting – billing software solutions available worldwide, most commercial software providers lack at offering the space and scope essential for end-to-end integration to manage finances.
Billing Software for Small Businesses: Choosing the right one
A billing software allows businesses to store customers’ personal and purchase information in a centralized database. This helps businesses quickly access client records as and when required. A few also enable storing customers’ preferred payment methods with their account information. But, to what extent do these solutions empower businesses for independent finance management? i.e; without relying on another third-party solution. In that case, finance professionals are likely to fiddle between numerous tools for outsourcing solutions. Growing startups and SMEs seek solutions that too grow with their business. An invoicing/ billing software that offers everything from design and features to security and payment feasibility, is what a business rightly needs.
Let’s get on to the basic aspects that a business must consider while choosing suitable billing and invoicing software.
Ease of use
A business owner must ensure that a solution does not welcome more problems for the employees. The software should be easy-to-learn and use with minimal training. Creating professional invoices should not be time-consuming.
Security
Securing business and customer data is one of the most vital factors when choosing invoicing/ billing software. It gets tricky, especially when choosing a package that offers accounting and billing software solutions, as they deal with the confidential financial details of the customer.
Customization
Talking about superior customer experience, businesses can impress their clients with highly customized service delivery, may also include creating customized invoices. This highly reflects their service/ product calibre.
Scalability
Businesses that are scaling at a pace, need a solution that does not go dysfunctional even when there are numerous invoices/ bills generated each day.
GST Billing Software + OPEN
For constantly scaling and evolving startups and small businesses, there is (a lot) more to expect from billing software on top of the above-discussed features. That’s where integrating GST billing software with OPEN can be rendered as the perfect business finance management solution. OPEN enables businesses to implement advanced accounting practices and business tax management into their schedule by integrating the existing billing software such as ZohoBooks, Tally and QuickBooks (coming soon). Here’s how:
Eliminate manual data entry
Finance teams, especially accountants can get rid of inconvenient manual entry of the bill/ invoice data. A small mistake or a swap while entering the data in software can alter the entire reporting. OPEN auto-fetches data from the existing invoices/ bills for all the transactions when synced with the billing software.
Map transactions – update data in real-time
Integrating the billing software with OPEN makes the transaction source identification effortless with data updated in real time. This allows businesses to trace a better workflow, as they save time on rooting the accurate source of each payment.
Sync transactions – unify the process
Making payments via bills created on software is again a task. Businesses can sync the created bills and make payments via multiple modes from OPEN. This transaction data gets auto-updated on the billing software, ultimately reconciling data on both platforms.
Make business GST compliant
Importing the existing invoices from a billing software on OPEN or creating a new invoice on OPEN, leads to a smooth business tax management journey. OPEN auto-segregates all the invoices into relevant GTSR-1 categories. The GSTR-1 filing is, therefore, sorted!
Filing sales tax returns (GSTR-1) with OPEN couldn’t be easier, with just these 3 steps:
- Verify the (already) categorized invoices for any error mitigation.
- Save and upload the invoices to the GST portal.
- File returns via OTP verification.
For all the GSTR-1 returns filed, businesses can also download the GSTR-2A reports from the same dashboard in real time.
What’s more?
With the latest updates on e-Invoicing by CBIC, applicable businesses can ensure GST compliance via e-Invoicing with OPEN. They can convert all the applicable invoices into e-Invoices and e-Way Bills in one click.
Moreover, OPEN allows enabling TDS deduction right in the invoice creation phase. This saves time and effort consumed in TDS calculation and payments for the bill, which can be better used in productive tasks. Besides, if one is to make a TDS payment for an existing bill, one can also create a challan on OPEN in one step. All the bill details get automatically fetched on the challan. Payment for the challans created can be done right there via multiple payment modes. Not to mention, all the previously paid challans as well as pending challan payments are visible on the OPEN dashboard for easy reference.
Integrating a GST billing software with OPEN cuts down the scratch-to-end business tax management hassles to almost ZERO!
