Field service invoicing: Invoicing for Value vs. Service

If that is the scenario, it is time for your field services organization to migrate from its legacy invoicing setup to a system that syncs across devices and connected invoicing approach. 

However, the real intent of migration from legacy to integrated invoicing system lies in the ideal of respecting customer’s time and money as an essential business pursuit. To think of it, customers are more interested in the value derived from the field services rather than the transaction itself. The right approach to field services is to not compel the customer to bear the cost of discomfort or loss of productivity on account of service interruption. 

When you work with multiple systems, services attended via an app, service billing manually transferred to spreadsheets, technicians unable to create pro forma, and days worth of latency in seeking customer approval on the invoices, your time and productivity are critically compromised with these multiple legacy invoicing systems. Service-level agreements (SLAs) have a major implication on how efficient and effective your invoicing procedures turn out to be; they are crucial for workforce decision-making. And legacy invoicing systems simply fail to sync them together. 

Choosing to stick with multiple legacy invoicing systems, working with inefficiencies on account of manual invoicing processes not only decelerates your attempt of making field invoicing better, but it also drastically reduces your field workforce productivity output. 

Legacy processes that involve manual record-keeping and bill generation require field workers to make trips back to the office for updating records and initiating invoicing. Paper and spreadsheet-based processes put a limit on productivity and make real-time updates impossible. Such systems lack automation, cloud storage, and predictive-analytics and need huge resources to maintain them. 

They do not help reduce the non-value-added time that technicians spend preparing invoices, filling out work orders, and providing other documentation. Inaccuracies creep in on account of unreliable service parts inventory records as and when handwritten work orders and invoices are no longer legible. There is lack of time-sensitive decision-making and there is no transparency in the billing against several service events.

Here’s what you miss out with your legacy invoicing setup:

Every service interruption is a lesson that calls for value introspection on account of the field service organization to design their business paradigm in a way that focuses on the elimination of dependency of their asset and workforce on such systems. 

Connected Field Service management solutions and mobile technology have revolutionized the industry by streamlining processes and significantly improving customer experiences. Here’s what it means for field services invoicing.

Integrating payments with field service applications gives businesses the ability to accept payments on-site, reduce paperwork, collect revenues faster, and minimize the number of late payments. The ability to retrieve previous invoices/work orders, generate service bills/invoices, and modify them in real-time further amplifies the productivity of your field service organization. 

Mobile-enabled field service invoicing lets technicians pre-authorize charges for emergency repairs or additional repairs that might come up. This further helps companies create an accurate customer history, track the dates, model numbers, and other details of past services.

SLAs can also impact the speed of invoicing. So, companies can reduce overhead costs by having a system that automates such SLAs and helps with their billing/invoice generation and reduce the latency in receiving payments. 

Connected Invoicing platforms enable a secure portal that customers can access for smart payments – from anywhere, at any time. As a result, customers can approve and fulfil invoices at the earliest and there are lesser delinquent accounts, and fewer resources assigned to collections.

Connected Field Services with Microsoft Dynamics 365 is an end-to-end solution that lets you manage complex service agreements, manage service orders, and track assets and inventory. When you quickly turn completed work orders into customer invoices for billing your chargeable work, everything else aligns. Your entire field service setup quickly identifies and dispatches resources, takes care of invoices, and gains the insights needed to provide predictive and proactive field services to your customers. 

With Connected Field Services, you automate the field invoicing in the cloud and spend less time worrying about customer payments. This is what lets you focus on doing business the right way that truly delights your customers.