There are times when you might have to go on an outcall as a part of field service responsibility to help your team with the sales call. This also means that you have to punch out of the office for the day and have to manage the business financials of your business starting from balancing books to authorizing paychecks.

The most important task a business owner’s face is sending invoices for their services or work done. The question is when to send an invoice to clients? Before or after the job is done?

Let’s evaluate 3 options for your invoice timing:

Option 1: Send Invoice Before Starting The Work

Sending an invoice prior to the beginning of a job suits perfectly for the small-scale projects. There are few upside and downside of sending an invoice before the project starts.

Improved Cash Flow

Receiving money before you even start the project helps your business a lot in easing the cash flow. Not only you could buy supplies and resources required for the project from the sum received instead of buying on credit, but it also increases your chances of bidding on other projects simultaneously. Strong cash flow brings stability to any business, especially to freelancers and startups.

Sincerity Towards The Project

It is obvious that if your project or services are paid in full before even you have started working on it, means that you have made a legally binding commitment and shown your sincerity to complete the job in the required time. More importantly, it can also harm the reputation and ruin client-customer relationships if the work is not delivered on time.

Indecisive Clients

Many clients are indecisive about the invoicing and tend to get anxious as they have paid in advance for the goods and services that they are yet to receive. Small field service business operators suffer from the same conundrum as they have received the money for the project beforehand. Anxious clients add stress to already stressful projects.

Option 2: Send Invoice After Completing The Work

More often than not, invoices are sent after the job is completed. Generally, field service businesses are also involved in sending invoices once the work is done.

Unsure Of Payment

This is a bit tricky sledge. In most of the cases, after you finish a project for one of the regular clients, the incentives for customers to pay you decreases. Many at times, sending invoices after completing the job may also leave you nothing for the efforts if there aren’t any strict payment terms agreed upon.

Meet Or Exceed Customer Expectations

The purpose of the invoices is to get you paid faster. Hence, once the job is done and invoices are sent, depending upon the client payment schedule, it may or may not help you in managing your cash flow. Also, by waiting to bill customers, you try to convey to clients about the incentive for either meeting or exceeding the quality expectations.

Click here to know: “Pros & Cons Of Using ‘Due Upon Receipt’ Method For Invoice Payment Terms”

Option 3: Best of Both

The best way to attain margin for your work is by taking advantage of getting paid before and after the work is done. To do this, make sure that you request an upfront payment of 25 to 30% of the total cost of the project. This should suffice you for purchasing any equipment and materials, to begin with, the task. Then, stipulate a final payment that covers the completion of a project.

Whether you send an invoice before or after the work, make sure that the payment terms and conditions of the project are clearly mentioned in a legally binding contract. Moreover, you can also use the best free online invoice maker to help you with time and expense tracking of the project. Invoicing and billing software can also help you in managing the project, recurring invoices, customize invoices and many more other features.

Concluding Note:

In the end, transitioning to the cloud-hosted invoicing generator is a viable option and a big step but on the contrary, it also helps saves you time and money. If you are considering to simplify your accounting and invoicing process and get rid of tedious paperwork, then the best option for you to consider is Moon Invoice.

Following are the immediate ways a business can get benefited from Moon Invoice and could possibly avoid a financial backlog.

Schedule invoicing
Direct invoicing
Invoice any time, anywhere
Organized invoicing system
Ease cash flow management
Manage multiple businesses
Quickly import, export, print, and sync
Create and manage your own custom settings
Manage multiple payment options and many more…

All this might sound expensive, but in reality, it is not. The online invoicing application from Moon Invoice comes with a 7 days free trial period to give you first-hand operational experience and functionality feel of the app. So, we do not see any reasons for you to hold back from giving this much-awaited momentum to your business.

Recurring Payments Vs Recurring Invoices

Recurring Payments	Recurring Invoices
Recurring payments charge the customer’s credit card account or debit card account on a predetermined schedule for the same amount as preapproved.	Send an invoice to your customer on a regular basis. The client receives the invoice but, money is not paid unless the customer approves.
A business that takes prepayment of money and sells a monthly subscription service and product. Subscription services are excellent examples of this.	A company that provides fixed services with billable hours is an excellent choice for recurring billing. For example law firms and consulting agencies.

Pros and Cons of Recurring Invoices

Pros	Cons
You eliminate the possibility of human error by automating the billing process. If you use a recurring invoice, you will not be concerned about forgetting to charge your customers for the things they ordered.	You must exercise caution while recurring billing to prevent issuing inaccurate pricing. This also holds for price changes that could take place right once an invoice is created.
If you provide your customers with the option for recurring billing, they are more likely to buy products regularly.	It could be difficult to cope with recurring invoices if a transaction fails for any reason.

Net 45	Invoice is due in full within 45 days with no early payment discount offered
2/10 net 45 terms	2% discount if you pay within 10 days; otherwise full payment of the invoice is due in 45 days
1/15 net 45 terms	1% discount if you pay within 15 days; otherwise full payment of the invoice is due in 45 days
1/10 net 45 terms	1% discount if you pay within 10 days; otherwise full payment of the invoice is due in 45 days
1/7 net 45 terms	1% discount if you pay within 7 days; otherwise full payment of the invoice is due in 45 days

Category	Net Method vs. Gross Method	Explanation
Calculation Approach	- Applies tax credits first; reduces taxable income before computing tax liability.	- Doesn't apply tax credits; computes taxable income without considering tax credits.
Tax Credit Eligibility	- Allows for greater likelihood of tax credit eligibility due to reduced taxable income.	- Limits tax credit eligibility because taxable income hasn't been reduced yet.
Itemized Deduction Requirement	- Lowers threshold requirement for itemizing deductions due to decreased taxable income.	- Raises threshold requirement for itemizing deductions due to higher taxable income.
Advantages	- Leads to lower taxable income and increases chances of meeting qualifications for other tax benefits.	- Results in higher taxable income compared to net method.
Disadvantages	- May miss opportunity to reduce tax burden if taxpayer doesn't itemize deductions or take advantage of tax credits.	- Increases taxable income and may result in higher overall tax bill.