Credit control is a critical aspect of your small business’s financial health. Managing invoices, monitoring outstanding payments, following up with clients… it all plays a part in ensuring consistent cash flow and protecting your business from late or missed payments. But credit control isn’t a quick, one off task, and as a small business owner, you may find it difficult to dedicate the time needed to keep on top of it. It can be time-consuming and mentally draining, especially when your focus is needed in several places at once. So, what can you do about it?
Delegating credit control tasks to a virtual assistant can offer a practical solution. Virtual Assistants can support credit control through structured invoicing, consistent follow-ups, and streamlined systems, meaning you can maintain financial stability for your small business without having to put other core functions on the backburner.
Let’s explore why consistent credit control is so important, and how a Virtual Assistant can support you in managing it.
The Importance of Credit Control
We all know credit control is important. But the scale by which it can impact your business may not become clear until things start to go wrong. For small businesses like yours, even three or four late payments can lead to liquidity challenges that hinder growth and create disruptions in all aspects of your business. A clear and consistent credit control process helps reduce the risk of cash flow interruptions, improve client accountability, and ensure that financial obligations such as payroll, taxes, and expenses can be met on time.
Despite its importance, credit control is often one of the first administrative duties to be put on the backburner in favour of more immediate and pressing responsibilities. We’ve all be there. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day, and you’ll likely find yourself running out of time to follow up on overdue invoices. While this is completely normal and for the most part unavoidable when you’re working with limited time and resources, it can result in payments delays that are both preventable and harmful. This makes credit control a primes candidate for being delegating to a Virtual Assistant.
How a Virtual Assistant Can Support Invoicing
The invoicing process is perhaps the most time-consuming aspect of credit control. It’s also the part of the process that is most prone to human error (let’s face it, all invoices start to look the same after a bit!). A Virtual Assistant can take ownership of the entire invoicing process, from generating and sending invoices to maintaining organised records and scheduling follow-ups. Using accounting or invoicing software, a VA can automate parts of the process, reducing the chance of manual errors and ensuring that invoices are sent out promptly.
The accurate and up to date records your Virtual Assistant will maintain give a clearer overview of where your accounts stand, which payments have been received, and which payments are still outstanding. This streamlines the process of ensuring late invoices are followed up on and caught before they cause cash flow issues. Invoices can be scheduled at consistent intervals, tailored to individual client agreements or payment terms, and have all necessary documentation ready to go. Your VA will be solely focused on preventing unnecessary delays by inputting these solid strategies.
Chasing Late Payments
Nobody likes following up on overdue payments – it’s awkward, it’s uncomfortable and frankly the very last thing you want to be doing when you’re trying to manage the rest of your small business. It’s also a delicate balancing game. While obtaining payments is vital, pushing in the wrong way can sever customer relationships or but a dampener on the rapport you’ve worked hard to establish with clients. A Virtual Assistant will focus on obtaining those payments, and maintain positive client relationships at the same time. Using standard templates and communication protocols, the VA can issue payment reminders, request confirmation of payment dates, and escalate follow-ups as needed.
As Virtual Assistants, it’s our job to slip seamlessly into your business. We act on behalf of you, meaning we can maintain a consistent tone in communication that reinforces those all important payment expectations. The last thing you want is for lack of communication to signal to clients that late payments are acceptable. Where credit control is concerned, consistency is key. Having a Virtual Assistant handle your credit control process means that follow-ups are timely, systematic, and aligned with your business’s payment policies.
Streamlining Credit Control Processes
When it comes to credit control, it’s not always late payments that hold you up. Sometimes it’s your processes. When time and resources are in short supply, the process can get a little clunky. Bits done here and there but never quite followed through, handling things manually and finding it challenging to keep up. There are all sorts of things that can slow your credit control processes down. Again, a Virtual Assistant is an excellent remedy for this. Part of our role is to identify any inefficiencies I your processes and recommend improvements. For example, we might suggest automating reminders, develop a tracking spreadsheet or help standardise terms and conditions across all contracts and invoices.
If your Virtual Assistant specialises in credit control, like so many do, they’ll be well-versed in using cloud-based accounting platforms and productivity tools, making it easier to introduce system-based workflows that reduce human error and administrative work. In short, A VA can step in to streamline your processes and ensure your credit control functions are as efficient as possible.
Reducing Financial and Emotional Stress
The financial aspect of running a small business is perhaps the most stressful. Finding the time and resources to carry out credit control can be anxiety-inducing, especially if you’re working solo or with a very small team. Add to that the stress of maintaining a consistent positive cash flow, and it can quickly begin to seem very daunting. Investing in the support of a Virtual Assistant when it comes to credit control improves financial predictability and visibility, taking away some of that anguish.
Credit Control Support with The Edwards Company
Here at The Edwards Company, we specialise in supporting small businesses with all aspects of credit control. For more information on how we can help, please do not hesitate to get in touch.