Processing bulk invoices at low cost

[normally-misunderstood]

Hi

This is my first post and having looked through the threads I could not find anything that answered my question.

I will be soon starting a business which will be a broker type business. I will be selling services to one company but subcontracting the work to others. Most services will be every 3 weeks which will mean an invoice comes into me from a sub contractor and I re invoice to the customer. Eventually payment will come in from the customer and I will pay the sub contractor.

I anticipate that I will be receiving between 1000 - 3000 invoices every month for the first 12 months and this will grow to 5000 in the following 6 months.

I do not really want to take on staff to process these due to the cost implications but wondered if anyone could give me guidance on what alternatives may be available to me.

I look forward to the responses. Thanks in anticipation.

[Alison Jones]

HI

If you don't want to take on staff, there are many freelance administrators or bookkeepers who could do this type of work. There is a site www.peopleperhour.co.uk (http://www.peopleperhour.co.uk) that you can advertise on, not sure how it works for the person advertising, I know the person applying for the work if their bid is successful they pay a commission. I think if you google institute of certified bookkeepers you can post a job vacancy on there for free and can specify the person must be self employed/freelance. Also your local newspaper if you had advert looking for freelance/self employed you would be able to find someone.

Alison

[NCA]

Your best bet is to get your subcontractors to bill electronicaly. This might be via a website where they enter their invoice or it could be via a specific email address where they fill in an excel template and email it to you or another means such as FTP (you could even have 3 or 4 diffrent methods at the same time)

Then you would need automation at the back end to take these electronic invoices and push them in to your purchase invoice/purchase ledger system. When you receive payment from your client that will trigger payment to your subcontractor. You would need some sort of unique refrence number to tie the clients job to a specific subcontractos invoice.

Effectivley you could automate the whole process. With some decent exception reporting and some checks and balances the problem invoices should be at a very manageable level.

[Tej]

Hi

This is my first post and having looked through the threads I could not find anything that answered my question.

I will be soon starting a business which will be a broker type business. I will be selling services to one company but subcontracting the work to others. Most services will be every 3 weeks which will mean an invoice comes into me from a sub contractor and I re invoice to the customer. Eventually payment will come in from the customer and I will pay the sub contractor.

I anticipate that I will be receiving between 1000 - 3000 invoices every month for the first 12 months and this will grow to 5000 in the following 6 months.

I do not really want to take on staff to process these due to the cost implications but wondered if anyone could give me guidance on what alternatives may be available to me.

I look forward to the responses. Thanks in anticipation.

Congratulations on your business start. Sounds like a good model.. where the subcontractors wait for your payment to come from your clients before they get paid.

Good luck. Please let us know how you get on.

[wood1e2]

What is your idea of a low cost? 10p per invoice? 25p per invoice?

[DavidT]

One thing to consider may be system like e-conomic (http://www.accountantscircle.co.uk/PartnerOffers/OnlineAccountingSystem/tabid/579/Default.aspx)... which has a documents module that can be trained to automatically process invoices.

We do have that partner offer for bookkeepers and accountants, but you can just click straight through to their website for more info.

David Toohey

(http://www.accountantscircle.co.uk/) (http://www.accountantscircle.co.uk/Membership/MembershipPackages/tabid/70/Default.aspx)

[normally-misunderstood]

HI

If you don't want to take on staff, there are many freelance administrators or bookkeepers who could do this type of work. There is a site that you can advertise on, not sure how it works for the person advertising, I know the person applying for the work if their bid is successful they pay a commission. I think if you google institute of certified bookkeepers you can post a job vacancy on there for free and can specify the person must be self employed/freelance. Also your local newspaper if you had advert looking for freelance/self employed you would be able to find someone.

Alison

Hi Alison - Thanks for the advice but preferrably I would like the system to be IT based as man/woman power could lead to down time if my accounts person is off sick or perhaps maternity leave.

[normally-misunderstood]

What is your idea of a low cost? 10p per invoice? 25p per invoice?

thats an interesting question but as I am just starting out I really have no idea. what do you think and do you know how this can be done for 10p?

[normally-misunderstood]

Your best bet is to get your subcontractors to bill electronicaly. This might be via a website where they enter their invoice or it could be via a specific email address where they fill in an excel template and email it to you or another means such as FTP (you could even have 3 or 4 diffrent methods at the same time)

Then you would need automation at the back end to take these electronic invoices and push them in to your purchase invoice/purchase ledger system. When you receive payment from your client that will trigger payment to your subcontractor. You would need some sort of unique refrence number to tie the clients job to a specific subcontractos invoice.

Effectivley you could automate the whole process. With some decent exception reporting and some checks and balances the problem invoices should be at a very manageable level.

Thanks for your suggestion. I like the sound of this but would like to learn more as part of my research. How do you feel I can learn more about your comments?

[normally-misunderstood]

just to reconfirm my thoughts on these many invoices - i am happy to invest in a system that can do what I need. ideally as per a previous suggestion someone would go onto a website input the details online and the software would then invoice my customer. upon reciept of payment i could then push a button to release payment or the software perhaps might be able to do that giving me free time!

[wood1e2]

I don;t know if it can be done for 10p per invoice. If 1000 can be completed in one day then that's £100.

Which in my eyes is very cheap!!

Would these invoices be entered onto Sage or some other accounting software?

If so then there will need to be charges for setting up invoices, clients and subbies.

If you went down the fully automated route you could spend more than a full time employee for one year developing something...but then you wouldn't have any further costs after that. So that is a huge benefit.

Thinking about it you may be able to run data dumps with Sage, I think there is a 3rd party application. You just have to buy or rent Sage.

That then brings me to think about Quick books, which is cheaper to buy and I think you can dump CSV files directly into QB's.

All this will be more expensive but you could possibly run the automation once completed.

Obviously if you paid more you could have a bookeeper enter everything and produce management accounts. Which will then save you money at year end.

So there are many many options it all depends on what you are willing to pay and what type of service you want.

Remember cheap normally means invoicing gets scr*wed...which means people start to not get paid, which means you saved nothing but lost clients/subbies!!!

PM me if you want to chat more about this, without having to give private details on a public forum :)

[NCA]

just to reconfirm my thoughts on these many invoices - i am happy to invest in a system that can do what I need. ideally as per a previous suggestion someone would go onto a website input the details online and the software would then invoice my customer. upon reciept of payment i could then push a button to release payment or the software perhaps might be able to do that giving me free time!

My company has worked on similar automated solutions before. If you are interested in taking things further please PM me for a chat.

[NCA]

I don;t know if it can be done for 10p per invoice. If 1000 can be completed in one day then that's £100.

Which in my eyes is very cheap!!

Would these invoices be entered onto Sage or some other accounting software?

If so then there will need to be charges for setting up invoices, clients and subbies.

If you went down the fully automated route you could spend more than a full time employee for one year developing something...but then you wouldn't have any further costs after that. So that is a huge benefit.

Thinking about it you may be able to run data dumps with Sage, I think there is a 3rd party application. You just have to buy or rent Sage.

That then brings me to think about Quick books, which is cheaper to buy and I think you can dump CSV files directly into QB's.

All this will be more expensive but you could possibly run the automation once completed.

Obviously if you paid more you could have a bookeeper enter everything and produce management accounts. Which will then save you money at year end.

So there are many many options it all depends on what you are willing to pay and what type of service you want.

Remember cheap normally means invoicing gets scr*wed...which means people start to not get paid, which means you saved nothing but lost clients/subbies!!!

PM me if you want to chat more about this, without having to give private details on a public forum :)

I would be intrested to see Quickbooks run with 150, 000 + purchase invoices in the system which is the volume the OP is talking about within 3 years.

[wood1e2]

I would be intrested to see Quickbooks run with 150, 000 + purchase invoices in the system which is the volume the OP is talking about within 3 years.

I wouldn't have a clue!!! I think QB is usless, but some people/clients love it, so you have to go with it. I think they like the delete function, rather than its capacity :)

But at the end of the day, the invoices once used and in a previous year/period should not form part of the current workings, so the number of invoices purchase or sales should not effect the running of the software.

Unless, you are going to confirm my view that it is badly written in the first.

[Alison Jones]

Hi Alison - Thanks for the advice but preferrably I would like the system to be IT based as man/woman power could lead to down time if my accounts person is off sick or perhaps maternity leave.


Hi

Sites like people per hour and ICB - if you advertise for freelancers (self employed) you do not have to pay sick pay or maternity pay. You pay them for the hours you need. If you don't have any work for them for some months you are not obligated to pay anything. You do get a lot of people doing freelance/self employed work because they don't want a full time job.

Alison

[NCA]

I wouldn't have a clue!!! I think QB is usless, but some people/clients love it, so you have to go with it. I think they like the delete function, rather than its capacity :)

But at the end of the day, the invoices once used and in a previous year/period should not form part of the current workings, so the number of invoices purchase or sales should not effect the running of the software.

Unless, you are going to confirm my view that it is badly written in the first.

Not sure how its written. My point was that QB and other small business accounting systems are not designed to handle that sort of throughput. It would be far better to go for a system that was designed for those sorts of volumes in the first place.

[wood1e2]

Thats true enough, so i think something Sage/Access would be better, but that would go against the OPs desire to be cheap

[normally-misunderstood]

Thats true enough, so i think something Sage/Access would be better, but that would go against the OPs desire to be cheap

cheap as in not employing a team of people to process 3000 invoices coming in and sending 3000 invoices out per month. I am happy to pay for an initial system which is future proof I can link this to a program that allows me to track my customers, the number of times they have been serviced (historic) future scheduled services and what invoices have come in/gone out and the profit on that one account!

its a big ask and I am sure the setup costs will be inline with the systems ability. If I do not need to employ 3 - 4 people at say £15,000 per year then thats a winner for me!:)

[NCA]

Thats certainly a good approach to take. Realisticaly you arent likely to see any ROI in the first year due to the costs involved. In the second year yoiu should start seeing some return.

[GillespieBS]

Hi

This is my first post and having looked through the threads I could not find anything that answered my question.

I will be soon starting a business which will be a broker type business. I will be selling services to one company but subcontracting the work to others. Most services will be every 3 weeks which will mean an invoice comes into me from a sub contractor and I re invoice to the customer. Eventually payment will come in from the customer and I will pay the sub contractor.

I anticipate that I will be receiving between 1000 - 3000 invoices every month for the first 12 months and this will grow to 5000 in the following 6 months.

I do not really want to take on staff to process these due to the cost implications but wondered if anyone could give me guidance on what alternatives may be available to me.

I look forward to the responses. Thanks in anticipation.

I have developed software that does exactly this. Effectively can process thousands of invoices with limited manpower and more importantly with data entry staff rather than accountants. Beware the software used as it will need to be robust and scalable. Unfortunately the software and development will be expensive so you may want to consider outsourcing to eliminate the start up costs. PM me if you want to discuss further.

[wood1e2]

So what are you actually looking for? I obviously get the invoice part of it. But what about accounting for them?

Monthly management reports? Bank reconciliations etc...?

Then you can look at having a new solution developed....or look at established accounting software with data dumps etc.

And then look at employing someone to handle the bank recs/overheads/creditors/debtors etc.

[normally-misunderstood]

Ideally my subcontractors will have access to a secure part of my website where they can access the customer details they have serviced that day and charge me for the work done. Then the software will look at how many bags have been serviced and put the markup on the bill and charge my customers directly from my company. My intention is to employ nobody to do any admin work in the short term as the software should be good enough to do it.

[Tej]

hmmmmm.. no admin, bank receipts/payments automatic? How do you chase non paying customers? How do you intend to answer subcontractor queries? All automatic? How do subcontractor chase for monies owing? 3000 invoices inbound, same amount outbound? and no admin!!
Woodie has very pertinent questions!

As said in my original post.. subcontractors waiting for you to get paid before you pay them?

Ideal world:)

[GillespieBS]

you'll have someone to control the process, record the money coming in and paying the subbies, dealing with queries etc. Be careful relying on subbies doing the work - not always reliable and as stated earlier, you may as well as think about reporting requirements and accounting.

[normally-misunderstood]

I do understand your concerns but my subcontractors will actually pay me to join my alliance. It will work in a sort of franchise style and whilst I understand concerns about living in the ideal world my subbies will be on a 60 day payment term and my customers a 30 day. I am sure that there will be a someone somewhere that can write a program that can handle my requests and fully report on credit control for chasing customers etc....if I have to get someone to look after admin then fair enough but the business model if set up correctly and managed properly will have very few queries....I am not going into this blind as I have worked for a massive company and have experience of all aspects of operations, credit control and sales. If I didn't think it was possible I wouldn't be looking at doing it.

[Tej]

I do understand your concerns but my subcontractors will actually pay me to join my alliance. It will work in a sort of franchise style and whilst I understand concerns about living in the ideal world my subbies will be on a 60 day payment term and my customers a 30 day. I am sure that there will be a someone somewhere that can write a program that can handle my requests and fully report on credit control for chasing customers etc....if I have to get someone to look after admin then fair enough but the business model if set up correctly and managed properly will have very few queries....I am not going into this blind as I have worked for a massive company and have experience of all aspects of operations, credit control and sales. If I didn't think it was possible I wouldn't be looking at doing it.

I guess this massive company also ran with a couple of general factotums!
If you have experience in all aspects of the business. you probably know what programs are required.and how everything integrates with each part . should be easy peasy.

[wood1e2]

You are still missing the point!!

Look at the your model.

You will pay Subbies on 60 days, and you will be paid on 30days.

Well having worked in several different industries I can assure you that it don't work that way. Currently I have been working with a client who has 30days from point of invoice. He rarely gets bad for all invoices in one period until about 68 days.

Now that is coming down, but lets say he is in your niche, and gets 95% of invoics paid on time, that still leaves upto 150 invoices unpaid. (15% of 3000)

Now thats when your intigrated bespokely developed credit control system starts working, it sends(email) a letter of warning that services will stop.

That brings in 90% of the 15% but it is still at 37 days. The final 5% never respond, so 7 days later a stop letter is emailed out. That brings in 95% of the remaining 5%.

The balance never respond because they refuse to have email!! So who posts the letters?

or some of the balance who have email but refuse to pay on time as they know you have an automated system and they think, well if you can't be arsed to provide a human service I can't be arsed to pay you on time.

Even with late payment interest added...which in my experience just tends you to loose more clients than get more money in!!!

Oh and if you are thinking that by stopping them, they are knackered, well unless you have once of the few unique TM protected products in the world, they will just not pay you until the court letter turns up (which cannot be automated) and get the service/supplies from someone else.

So automation is 'Kool and the gang' and I am sure we (not meaning to plug) develop a solution. But it would fail in more than just one area.

Apart from the above, the main reason an automated system would fail, because it is dealing with humans...And they are right nasty pains in the arses when they want to be!!!

And finally...automated bank recs/Creditors Control/Debtors Control, might be less flawed as it is only numbers...although it would need 2 or 3 controlling points, (value, Chq number, Another reference) otherwise the reconciliation will just reconcile £300 against the first £300 in tha bank account or client account.

Obviously from the bank point of view you should be able to download a CSV file...opppss that requires a human. System falls again.

The short answer to the above....you can have your automated system. I am not being negative or not believing it won't work. It can be developed for you :)

But once again those pesky clients/suppliers will get in the way.

[normally-misunderstood]

you raise some interesting points in your long response, thanks.

How would you integrate some technology with subcontracting the labour? The profit the business makes will be quite low and I was trying to avoid taking on expensive staff from the outset. The model to my business gives me a good cashflow from the start as my sub contractors will pay me a fee for the rights of a particular geographical area. My plan was that the fees would help with cashflow for late payers, along with start up costs and working cashflow for the first 18 months. If I need to subcontract labour then fair enough but I just want to understand how this will work and what the implications are for me keeping control over the business.

[Alison Jones]

Personally I don't think there is any program that can do everything for you so you won't need admin at all. I can't see there being a way of producing accurate year end accounts by a automated computer program - unless you are planning having the automated system produce them and get them audited by an accountant (a human). I say this because if there was a way to do this accurately by a program without paying an accountant then someone would already have done this already and don't think it would have been done before or people would have heard about it and maybe copied them.

Alison

[NCA]

Oh and if you are thinking that by stopping them, they are knackered, well unless you have once of the few unique TM protected products in the world, they will just not pay you until the court letter turns up (which cannot be automated) and get the service/supplies from someone else.

Actually it can be automated to a great degree. There was as sytem around in the early 90's that automaticaly generated the paperwork required for the county court. With all the court forms available as PDF's it would quite possible to automate the application. I dont know if it would be possible to automate an application using the online system but I suspect it could be done.


So automation is 'Kool and the gang' and I am sure we (not meaning to plug) develop a solution. But it would fail in more than just one area.

Apart from the above, the main reason an automated system would fail, because it is dealing with humans...And they are right nasty pains in the arses when they want to be!!!

Here I agree with you. You will always have some manual intervention.


And finally...automated bank recs/Creditors Control/Debtors Control, might be less flawed as it is only numbers...although it would need 2 or 3 controlling points, (value, Chq number, Another reference) otherwise the reconciliation will just reconcile £300 against the first £300 in tha bank account or client account.

Obviously from the bank point of view you should be able to download a CSV file...opppss that requires a human. System falls again.

You can automate this as well depending on your Bank and account type.

The short answer to the above....you can have your automated system. I am not being negative or not believing it won't work. It can be developed for you :)

But once again those pesky clients/suppliers will get in the way.

Its all doable but when you start adding up the costs they get quite large. They wouldnt phase a large company particularly. For a startup I am not so sure. Implemting a BACS system to pay the contractors is probably £6-7K in the first year depending on software cost and transaction fee per payment. 10p per transaction is pretty normal.

A mid range accounting system. A minimum of £10K and as much as £40K depending on the product and implementation costs.

Then you get on to the contractor website and system integration/ automation.

[wood1e2]

NCA; I agree with you concerning bank recs, but I would rather a human go over it every week/month/period.

normally-misunderstood; How would I go about it?

I don't know you business so I do not know how your subbies contact you, what relationship you would have? With my subbies I have to phone phone and then phone again to get them to send in invoices, with the correct information!! They are a pain, don't get me wrong they are fantastic at their specialism, but crap at admin.

But ideally, email in an invoice, PDF/.DOC. Which you will need even if they do one thousand things for you in one week. THe reason, legally you need an invoice with VAT number, Company registration if both applicable, but minimum name/address/date of work/invoice.

Moving on from that, they would also send in a Excel spreadsheet set to my requirements, but a minimum CSV/XML feed that can be dumped into my accounting solution, which would be a minimum Sage Line 50 Fin Controller, or whatever they call it now. For interaction with CSV etc Access Accounting may be better.

Then the human takes over. Inovicing clients/chasing money/sending out letters, running bank recs, creditor/debtor control accounts/pay subbies...etc etc etc

Obviously depending on the IT level of a subbie you could show them how to upload the inovices they are sending you, which would take out a step, but once again I think I would still prefer to have a human (that I controlled) to dumo the data.

Once that was running smoothly, I would look at integrating further automation.

Large companies would take a holistic approach, which as NCA states starts costing!!

Plus you may find that you work through the holistic appraoch get up and running, and realise that 1000 inovices works one way, but for 3000 inovices you could find the process would be better another way and that leads to redevelopment of your holistic approach...

I have to say I am really intrigue as to what you business is, would love to chat more PM me if you can't state to much publically :)

[normally-misunderstood]

hi wood1e2,

I wish I could tell you more but I have been stung before by not keeping quiet so at the moment with 6 months until launch and a lot of work to do I would rather not go into too much detail. What I can tell you is that when I say I am going to sub work out I do not mean to a one guy in a van kind of subcontractor but to professionally run small business who have there own accounts department and who will sign up to my company which will also involves some rules that must be honoured.

I appreciate that models of standard businesses involve the hiring of staff, but what I am keen to do as I research the opportunities in order to weigh up the options to explore why a business needs so many people from the outset when potentially you could manage the people and companies working for you to achieve your goals. I had hoped that a program that will allow my sub contracted companies would exist that would allow them to invoice me and my customers online and that a software program would exist that could say, right here is the invoice for xxx customer and I am going to look at what my business charges that customer and send an invoice out for me. I am under no doubt that people will need to be hired/subcontracted to check everything is working and for accounts to do vat returns but whilst I have the time I am trying to cover all options and opportunities so that I do not miss something.

On a personal note the response on this forum has been great. I never thought that so many people would have an opinion.

What is it that you or your business does? Unless its a secret!

[Peter Bowen]

I love automating businesses and hearing about how others plan to do theirs.

We issue several thousand invoices per month without human intervention. At the moment these are generated automatically by a system I built but we are thinking of moving over to KashFlow so that we don't have to build the rest of the accounting functions in (we're paying our accountant a whack of money every month to do stuff that could quite easily be done in an accounting package).

We've also integrated the getting-paid automatic debt collecting/ credit control system with KashFlow. This means that unpaid invoices can get chased without requiring much human intervention.

You might consider something like that:


A web based interface for your sub contractors to enter their invoices.
A quick approval system which lets you look at the invoice and the press a button to approve it. If approved it uses the API to make an invoice in KashFlow.
A batch job once per day to send the invoices by email (to those who have) and by ViaPost (for those who insist on paper).
Reminder emails using the Getting-Paid system (it speaks to KashFlow so you don't have enter stuff twice).


I think it would be quite feasible to process a couple of thousand invoices each month like this with minimum human intervention.

[wood1e2]

Not a secret :) web development/databases along with other business interests...

You might want to open up otherwise you are going to get to launch date and nothing has been developed :)

Just get people to sign a non disclosure document... Or speak to Peter Bowen as he seems to have it sussed. Maybe he will licence the automation he uses. As that maybe cheaper than having something developed yourself.

[Peter Bowen]

Or speak to Peter Bowen as he seems to have it sussed. Maybe he will licence the automation he uses. As that maybe cheaper than having something developed yourself.

The automatic credit control system is already available (if you can afford £9,97 per month).

Give me a shout about the invoice creation part of it. I'd be happy to give you a hand working out exactly what needs to be done.

Cheers

Pete

[GillespieBS]

It sounds easy enough to me. I agree that some level of human interface will have to exist and should be their for good controls. i.e allocating sales receipts and sending info off to the bank to make payments. Good reporting should be there to make this easier.

Need to think about the other things (nice to haves) SMS notifications, email shots across the subbies, statements of accounts (let them do there own credit control)

6 months is plenty of time to get this sorted with the right support.

[NCA]

Its intresting to read the diffrent approaches people would take. My company would approach it from a diffrent angle.

My company develops bespoke business systems based on our own platform. For a large portion of a project like this we wouldnt be integrating with other software but tailoring our own software to meet the clients needs.

What is unusal about normally-misunderstood's proposed system is that there are no manual sytems in place at all becasue their is currently no business up and running. On the one hand this is good because their are no employees resisting change or insisting that their is one true way to perform a task. On the other hand their is no manual fall back to revert to if things go pear shaped.

[Peter Bowen]

Hi NCA,

I'm not sure I agree with your approach for a start-up business, let me explain:


The only thing we can say for certain with a new business is that it is statistically likely to fail. This means that the upfront investment must be kept as low as possible to reduce the damage done to the entrepreneur if it fails. A bespoke system on a proprietery platform is likely to cost quite a bit of upfront money.
I like the saying "no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy" (forgive me if I've messed up the phrase - it's been 19 years since I tramped through the bush with a rifle in my hand). Extending this to business - the operating procedures undergo more change in the first year or so as they adjust to the realities of the market place. The cost of changing software driven business processes is likely to be high, especially if one is locked into a closed platform.
I'm uncomfortable with being locked into a platform that somebody else owned. I understand that there are some risks in committing to any platform but these can be reduced by getting your business processes automated in an open environment where the skills are readily available from a number of different vendors.

An alternative approach is to look for parts of the process that meet (or almost meet) your requirements and then stitch them together until the business has proved itself and you've got the operating requirements firmly bedded in.

An example that would probably work as a solution for the original poster would be to use an open source CRM product (such as SugarCRM) as the backbone to keep all the client and vendor details and then link that to other services eg KashFlow for accounting, Getting-Paid for credit control, ViaPost for sending paper letters, a SMS/Text message gateway, WorldPay or Protx for card payment etc. This means that you get all the well developed and tested functionality of each of these components for just the cost of linking them. Essentially harnessing best-of-breed solutions.

I've done this a couple of times for various types of solutions and it's far quicker (and thus cheaper) and much more robust than building from scratch.

The commitment to your developer is also much lower and you can automate bite size bits as you need them. You get a gentle chance to see if the working relationship is working, a bit like dating before getting married.

[NCA]

Hi Peter.

I am not sure where you get the idea where in my type of solution is written from scratch? When I say platform its a platform with as much functionality (a lot more in some cases!) than most mid range acccountig systems. It already has some of the automation that the OP requires . To be fair some of the other mid-range systems do as well.

Where your solution would be spending more money on integration far less will be necessary in my solution because some of the functionality arlready exists.

The problem with open source software is the support element. Its ok if you have in house expertise but if you dont a there is a business critical problem with the software what do you do? In my soultion you will be talking to someone who wrote the software within 5 minutes and if it is necessary the whole development team will pull several all nighters to fix the problem (this has never happend by the way!).

It would be intresting to cost the two diffrent solutions up. I think that you may be suprised! At the end of the day the major cost is not the purchase of the software its the configuration and implementation cost.

[Peter Bowen]

NCA,

My apologies if I offended you. It was not my intention to cast aspersions on your work. Now that you've explained that you won't be developing from scratch it makes more sense, however in my mind there would have to be significant advantages to justify having your entire business dependent on another company.

What happens to the investment your customers have made if (God forbid) you go out of business, or get too busy, or get too expensive for them?

With an open source system there is a large pool of skills to choose from and you can find someone who matches your pocket and other business requirements.

Cheers

Pete

[NCA]

Peter

No offence taken. I won't go into how we do it but our clients are protected if the company went into administration and would have access to the source code if necessary.

Would you choose open source even if the cost of developing an open source solution to get the functionality your require far exceeds the cost of purchasing a commercial solution?

[Peter Bowen]

It's a hard question to answer. If something was being developed specifically for my needs I would want to make sure that I was not tied to a single source of help. I guess it's like buying a delivery truck. A Toyota might cost more than a GAZ (a Russian marque) but I'd probably choose it because it was well supported by a network of service and spares providers.

Horses for courses.

[normally-misunderstood]

Hi

Sorry I have not been able to respond for a while but I have been doing quite a lot of work behind the scenes.

I have now got a clearer understanding of what my needs will be although I imagine this will change slightly over the next couple of months.

I want a web based system that when the data is originally input (by a human) it can be be seen by the master account holder (me) only. I suggest that each record will be given a different status...prospect, activated prospect, hot prospect, and customer.

Most of my partners/subcontractors will cover geographical regions and these will be awarded on a five year basis. There will be two types of partner/subcontractor (onsite, or offsite). I would like to be able to have a tick box for on and offsite and it would be useful if I could load into the system the subcontractors and the postcodes they cover for me. The system will hopefully allocate that record to that subcontractor.

The subcontractor will have access to the records on my CRM that he is responsible for. Once a job has been completed they will log onto my website look up the customer (account number, or name search) and then input what they have done on that visit. This could be a number of different types of unit such as wheelie bin, console, 15kg bag, 15 kg archive box. All prices provided by the subcontractor are fixed. So the system will recognise the unit price they have charged me and once they have input everything the system calculate the cost charged from the subcontractor to me. At this stage they will also enter the recycled weight of product taken from the customer. I guess at this stage they will click submit. All fields will be tab type fields and all customer information will be pre filled in. This will limit the amount of time it takes them to input data.

After they have submitted the enquiry the program will then automatically generate an invoice (e-invoice or if the customer requires a paper copy it will print one). Hopefully the system will understand the customers terms eg 30/60 days and the information will be logged and tracked. I suggest that a report could be printed be it a total report showing 30/60/90+ days or per customer and address. Hopefully the system will also show me how much I have charged less the sub contractors cost and the total profit on that account.

For customers the system will also need to track when contracts expire and forwarn me with about 3 months to go that the contract is soon up so I can re negotiate.

As I am supplying a service a subcontractor would also be able to stipulate the first service date and then click 4 weekly, 2 weekly or weekly. This will also update my system and potentially if there is a change in dates (there rarely is) the customer will recieve an automatic email telling them of the changes.

I would suggest that my customer also has access to part of the records such as future service dates and also historic information on recycling amounts. They should also have access to a facility that they could request an extra service. For example if they are having a large clear out. Upon clicking submit I would then get notified and can act imediately.

I guess you cannot link the system to bank accounts so that when a cutomer pays it updates the system and generates payment to the subcontractor? If you could then great.

My profit margins on this business are going to be low typically 20%. It is vital that the costs of employing people to look after admin are kept to a minimum. The value in this business will be realised when its sold about 7 years after start up.

I will know a lot more about what is happening in the next couple of weeks. It is vital that whoever creates this program stands by it as other people have said there is no plan b.:eek:

[GillespieBS]

This doesn't sound overly complicated to me. A CRM module and project accounting module. Also a service contract module. I know Microsoft Dynamics GP has the functionality as I've done a similar spec, although no doubt others can suggest alternatives. With GP, you can add web front end and endless reporting options.

You can link sales and purchase invoices to make payment of invocies less labour intensive and automate with your bank software. Other resource requirements would be at the front end to set up customer and projects, contracts.

You need to choose a developer and sit down (with a white board) spec it all up and get a price fixed. If you pay the price now you can definitely save in the long term.

Best of luck

[ACTSOL]

Hi

This is my first post and having looked through the threads I could not find anything that answered my question.

I will be soon starting a business which will be a broker type business. I will be selling services to one company but subcontracting the work to others. Most services will be every 3 weeks which will mean an invoice comes into me from a sub contractor and I re invoice to the customer. Eventually payment will come in from the customer and I will pay the sub contractor.

I anticipate that I will be receiving between 1000 - 3000 invoices every month for the first 12 months and this will grow to 5000 in the following 6 months.

I do not really want to take on staff to process these due to the cost implications but wondered if anyone could give me guidance on what alternatives may be available to me.

I look forward to the responses. Thanks in anticipation.

Hi,
You can use Sage Invoicing software for processing and recording your invoices. You can also hire remote assistant it costs around (0.10 to 0.20) sterling per invoice. If you need any reliable contact, feel free to contact.