Risk & Business Magazine CEO/CFO Business Today Magazine | Página 4

INVOICING
THE EMERGENCE OF
SIMPLIFIED
INVOICING
L
ast May when Ohio Valley Bank
introduced Autobooks—an online,
simplified invoicing and payment
collection service—the bank did
not intend to be on the cusp of
an emerging technology but merely did
so because we saw a glaring need from
business owners in our community.
Many small business owners were
frustrated with their choices. When faced
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with the options of purchasing and running
a complex accounting software program
or the expense of hiring the job out, many
chose instead to maintain a manual process
of creating and printing individual invoices
for each customer and keeping records
in writing or in a basic spreadsheet like
Microsoft Excel. While this solution was
cheap, it was time intensive and left much
room for human error.
Beyond the initial problems of complexity
and expense came the issue of the solution
not being a whole solution. Frustration
mounted among small business owners
when it came to sales that were later
invoiced rather than point-of-sale because
the nature of that transaction had many
more parts. Think about it. When a
customer purchases an item in the store,
the cashier collects the payment. When it