Ever since the early days of the office computer,people have been predicting the rise of the paperless office.

They were wrong. In fact, the amount of paper printed out in American offices has increased every year since  the 1980s -- until 2009.

In 2009, the amount of paper used in businesses in the U.S. finally decreased for the first time since modern offices began. A slight drop was visible at the end of 2008, but 2009 brought a striking 10% drop in the number of pages printed out in American offices.

Some researchers suggest that the economy may be part of the reason. Fewer workers to print papers, fewer contracts being signed, and less work being done might be causing less paper use. Manufacturers of printers and ink certainly hope so. Their dismal reports for hardcopy use generally include a hope that things will turn around in 2011.

But mail delivery peaked in 2006 and has been sinking every since. 

And this brings us to another likely explanation for the drop in hardcopies in offices: we just don't need as much paper any more. 

In addition to the undoubted desire to cut costs, researchers list three other workplace changes that can explain this phenomenon:

• Concern for the environment. The environmental impact of reducing paper use is enormous, and more of us are conscious of the need to do so. A couple of decades ago, it was natural to many people to print out emails and file them, or to make hard copies of papers to share. Now, we're likely to feel wasteful if we do that, and we only print out copies when they're really needed.
• With the rise of web firms and web professionals, we no longer just post paper documents up on the internet. Now, web content is designed to be read online, not to be printed out and read from paper. Look at your SmartPay screen -- it's friendly and easy, and you have no reason to want to go back to the confusing paper bills of the past.
•  The "digital natives" -- people born after 1980 -- are in the offices now. Those of us who grew up with the internet don't worry so much about losing information, and don't find that paper feels more natural.

The paperless office is still in the future, if it's on its way at all. We still printed out thousands of sheets of paper documents this year for every working person in the country. But a 10% drop in a single year is impressive. Let's see if we can't improve on that in 2010.

It may be time for holiday cheer, but it's also time for gathering data and cleaning it up for the end of the year.

if you're using SmartPay, you're in luck. Here are some of the things SmartPay can do for you:

• Import a mass customer list
• Create, edit or delete an invoice
• Create, edit or delete a statement
• Import a list of invoices
• Send an invoice or group of invoices
• Send a statement or group of statements
• Edit a customer’s information
• Record a payment made outside of SmartPay
• View a list of customer payments
• View a list of outstanding invoices
• Export customer, invoice, or statement data to excel
• Search or filter for a specific customer, invoice or statement

Whether you're tidying up the accounts, gathering sales and revenue data for 2010 marketing plans and sales projections, chasing down slow paying customers before the end of the year, or finding specific details for strategic planning, SmartPay will make it surprisingly easy.

If you need any assistance with the details of these operations, contact us for support.

Electronic invoicing is better than paper invoicing on a lot of levels. In many industries, it's no longer optional. Most customers now prefer it. The cost, which used to be a significant factor, is no longer an issue -- in fact, it offers significant savings for most companies.

There remains one question, when it comes to readiness for e-billing: can your office handle the technology?

This is a stopping point for some businesses. The fear is that  the company will make the shift to EIPP, commit to it, invest in the changeover with time or money, and then find that technical troubles crop up so frequently that the office is always in an uproar.

With programs like  SmartPay, the answer to "Can you handle the technology?" is usually "yes." If someone in your office can handle accounting software, shop successfully online, or use Facebook comfortably, then you have someone capable of using an e-invoicing service like SmartPay.

Still, with something this central to your back-office operations, it's possible that fear of the unknown will make it hard for some people to make the decision to switch to EIPP.  If the person responsible for invoicing in your office is happiest with paper and pen, and your accounting system lives in a ledger, then shifting to electronic invoicing can seem stressful, difficult, even scary.

What a great  New Year's resolution. Because -- unlike some of the resolutions you've made in the past -- you can do it.

Take the tour and see for yourself. If you're still not sure, we'll be happy to help you. 

 

The holiday season separates businesses into two groups: those, especially retailers, that make most of their sales during this one jam-packed season and those for whom this is quiet time.

If Christmas shoppers are the lifeblood of your business, you want to bring in as much trade as possible while keeping costs down and cashflow up. It may not be the time to switch to a new billing system, but it's certainly the time to pay attention to the effects of your old system on your business.

Studies in the EU, where there is a movement to mandate paperless invoicing for the sake of the environment, suggest that businesses can save literally millions of dollars by switching to electronic billing. A recent European study of supermarkets, for example, found that 40-70% of their operating costs were supply-chain related, and that a chain of grocery stores could process 1.5 million paper invoices a year. The back-office savings for such a company when they shift to electronic invoice management can be enough to completely change their profit margin.

Most of us don't spend millions on invoicing in the first place. Our holiday season invoicing headaches are things like being too busy on the sales floor to get the paper invoices out, mislaying important financial papers, and the holiday slowdown in payments from people who are too busy on their sales floors to pay us.

A recent conversation among small business owners reflected these concerns. Here were the issues they shared:

• A cookware retailer had mislaid hundreds of dollars worth of checks that should have been deposited, but were set aside when things got too busy. She was looking for the time to track down the checks, or to approach customers to ask for replacements. She was also coping with the fear that the checks might have been stolen rather than lost.
•  A printer admitted that he hasn't had time to invoice people for several months. He does all his own paperwork -- and it is in fact paperwork, since he sends out physical bills. He knows that customers won't be happy to get bills in the new year with dates from this year, so he's hoping things will slow down enough after Christmas to let him do a blitzkreig of billing before New Year's.
• A graphic artist was happy about the amount of work she's been doing for her clients in the lead-up to the holidays, but hasn't seen payments on over half her accounts. "I'm not sure who owes me what at this point," she lamented. She's thinking about paying for temporary accounting help to sort out statements.

All these problems can be fixed with electronic billing. EIPP solutions like SmartPay allow quick data retrieval, automatic bills and reminders, hassle-free deposits, and easy electronic payments for customers who may be busy or cash-strapped at this time of year. If you're in the holiday rush, take a moment now to make a note on your calendar to sign up for e-billing when things slow down -- or call to get the process started, and rest secure in the knowledge that this is the last year you'll have worries like these in the holidays.

If this is your slow time, go ahead and make the switch. Otherwise, you'll be like the old man who couldn't fix his roof  while it was raining -- but didn't fix it when it wasn't raining, because then it didn't leak.

Are checks an endangered species?

A recent survey says yes. Nearly 30% of U.S. consumers no longer pay even one recurring bill each month with paper checks. Less than half of all bills are now paid by check. And, according to the American Bankers Association, a quarter of American consumers expect to use checks even less in the future than they do now. The use of paper checks has in fact been declining steadily since 1990, and most economists expect them to be phased out entirely in the near future.

And yet the American consumer still uses paper checks more than people in other countries do. 

This is surprising. Electronic payments are faster, more efficient, and require less effort on the part of the consumer -- they can even be set up automatically. They're also less risky. A single stolen check can give a thief access to your entire bank account, and check fraud is easier than electronic crimes. So why are we still writing checks?

One economist suggested that Americans, still coping with an economic downturn and financial insecurity, like the in-control feeling of actually writing numbers on a piece of paper. Electronic payments, in some people's minds, are strongly associated with credit cards, which may in turn be associated with freewheeling spending.

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransisco has another explanation: "Network externalities." That is, companies that don't allow electronic payments require the use of paper checks, so consumers can't give them up entirely. If you have to haul out the checkbook to pay some bills, then you might as well pay other bills that way.

If this is the explanation, then paper checks may well be doomed. Organizations from utilities to health care providers to churches are accepting electronic payments. Consumer studies have, since 2006, shown that people generally prefer electronic payments, and companies appreciate the lower costs and higher level of customer retention associated with offering EIPP.

Personal checks were on the recent list of "Things About to Become Extinct" from Schargel Consulting Group,  along with cameras that use film and phone books. They're probably right.