The business world relied on paper invoicing for a long time, and online invoicing is what replaced it. There are enough concrete reasons to make the switch that the debate is mostly settled — here are five.
1. Higher security
There are endless ways paper bills leave a business vulnerable: a document left on a desk, a misdelivered envelope, a filing cabinet nobody locks. Each is a route to identity theft or simple data loss, and business information in the wrong hands does real damage.
Scale makes it worse. A business is not sending one bill to one party — there are hundreds of documents moving in and out of the accounts department, and every one of them is another chance for something to go astray.
Digital invoicing keeps sensitive business and customer information behind a login rather than in a box, and it can be backed up — see security.
2. Environmentally better
Generating invoices online means significantly less paper, and no printing or postage. It is a small per-invoice difference and a substantial annual one for any business sending volume.
3. Real savings on resources
The costs recovered are not trivial once you add them up: paper, printer consumables, envelopes, postage, and the staff time spent printing, folding and posting.
Email delivery removes the postal cost entirely, and it removes the delay that came with it.
4. Fewer late fees, on both sides
Automated systems send reminders about outstanding bills, which helps whoever is paying as much as whoever is owed. Fewer missed deadlines means less damage to credit standing, and when a customer does pay late it disrupts your own financial planning less.
It also works in your favour on the charging side: a reminder can carry a reminder fee and interest on the overdue amount, so late payment costs the person who is late rather than you — see payment reminders.
5. Time and effort returned
It takes real time to create an invoice, let alone check it and get it to the recipient. Automating that means minimal manual intervention: the document is assembled from records you already keep, and sending it is a click.
An honest note on paper
Two things paper still handles, worth acknowledging:
- Some customers require it. Certain industries and public bodies still want a posted document, and printing a PDF for them is not a failure of the system.
- Online needs a connection. Invoice Office is an online application — that is the trade for access from anywhere.
Neither is an argument against switching. They are just the reason “paperless” in practice means “paper by exception” rather than never.
Worth doing
Between the security, the saved resources, the reminders and the time returned, moving off paper is one of the easier decisions a business makes — invoices get produced accurately, in a fraction of the time, and the record of them looks after itself.