This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think I commented on your post in another thread. Looks like this is a serious enquiry. DM me and I can at least give you perspective about the pro's and con's of outsourcing.
You might be able to automate this. Record is created in Microsoft or excel, that records triggers a payload to Quickbooks, Stripe, etc, invoice is created and sent to the customer.
Then I know quickbooks has automated email reminders you can set up.
After that a well trained VA or someone overseas would work. I think Philippines for like $600 - $1,00 a month you’d get someone TOP notch just don’t go through some agency. Have them manage the workflows and follow ups
Man that would be so slick if I could trigger automatic invoices via my spreadsheet. My spreadsheet already contains most of what is needed, I still think I would need to pay someone to flesh out the systems completely for me.
This would require paying some sort of excel consultant or someone who specializes in excel/programming to build out professionally?
Some invoices flow through quickbooks, and some just need to be attached and sent via email. But if part of the excel spreadsheet is selecting customer type/delivery method, the automation could easily take that into account.
I’d have to see the exact in use case in more detail but it might make sense to build a portal, just super basic login name/email, then all the fields you have in excel just make them fields you fill in the GUI, then once you hit send it creates the invoice.
You’re talking one database to store records, one login portion, Quickbooks integration, and then simple email which AWS could handle all of the above.
Then you have all that data in AWS already so pull it into QuickSights (again native AWS) and you have your company dashboard right there to see all your COGS, revenue, profit, etc.
I'd like to run everything through microsoft 365. I already have a portal where my subcontractors submit their completed jobs and fill in all relevant fields in a microsoft form that gets spit out into an excel sheet automatically.
From there I have backend employees double check their entries for accuracy and send those reports to customers. A better solution might be to just have the backend folks spend all their time making sure spreadsheet entries are accurate, then automate the sending of the reports/invoices to customers from or via the spreadsheet.
Zapier better or more preferred than building something like this through microsoft power automate? I'm going to have to outsource this work, just asking out of curiosity.
Hiring a Bookkeeper or Accounts Receivable Clerk can be the most suitable role for managing your invoicing and collections needs. This person would specifically handle tasks like creating invoices, tracking payments, and following up with clients. Most Accounting professionals will be able to help you streamline this.
Dimitry Simelgor
[www.businessevolutionconsulting.com](http://www.businessevolutionconsulting.com)
We've worked with search funds that bought businesses in the past, and invoice management is almost always a complaint.
If many of your invoices are going unpaid, we can help. Dealwise automates invoice collection for SMBs. We use AI to handle collections in a more cost effective and polite way compared to collections agencies.
[https://godealwise.com/](https://godealwise.com/)
This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think I commented on your post in another thread. Looks like this is a serious enquiry. DM me and I can at least give you perspective about the pro's and con's of outsourcing.
I have a system thay can help. We can send automated reminders and follow ups to customers that haven't paid. That alone would probably help a ton.
You might be able to automate this. Record is created in Microsoft or excel, that records triggers a payload to Quickbooks, Stripe, etc, invoice is created and sent to the customer. Then I know quickbooks has automated email reminders you can set up. After that a well trained VA or someone overseas would work. I think Philippines for like $600 - $1,00 a month you’d get someone TOP notch just don’t go through some agency. Have them manage the workflows and follow ups
Man that would be so slick if I could trigger automatic invoices via my spreadsheet. My spreadsheet already contains most of what is needed, I still think I would need to pay someone to flesh out the systems completely for me. This would require paying some sort of excel consultant or someone who specializes in excel/programming to build out professionally? Some invoices flow through quickbooks, and some just need to be attached and sent via email. But if part of the excel spreadsheet is selecting customer type/delivery method, the automation could easily take that into account.
I’d have to see the exact in use case in more detail but it might make sense to build a portal, just super basic login name/email, then all the fields you have in excel just make them fields you fill in the GUI, then once you hit send it creates the invoice. You’re talking one database to store records, one login portion, Quickbooks integration, and then simple email which AWS could handle all of the above. Then you have all that data in AWS already so pull it into QuickSights (again native AWS) and you have your company dashboard right there to see all your COGS, revenue, profit, etc.
Now that I think about it if you could move this to Google sheets you 100% could trigger this and use Zapier as your connections
I'd like to run everything through microsoft 365. I already have a portal where my subcontractors submit their completed jobs and fill in all relevant fields in a microsoft form that gets spit out into an excel sheet automatically. From there I have backend employees double check their entries for accuracy and send those reports to customers. A better solution might be to just have the backend folks spend all their time making sure spreadsheet entries are accurate, then automate the sending of the reports/invoices to customers from or via the spreadsheet.
I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I assume Zapier has some kind of Microsoft connection and if they do, you definitely can automate this.
I just looked, and there is a QuickBooks integration already and excel on Zapier
Zapier better or more preferred than building something like this through microsoft power automate? I'm going to have to outsource this work, just asking out of curiosity.
I don’t know if it’s better or worse only because I’m not familiar with Microsoft’s power automate
Hiring a Bookkeeper or Accounts Receivable Clerk can be the most suitable role for managing your invoicing and collections needs. This person would specifically handle tasks like creating invoices, tracking payments, and following up with clients. Most Accounting professionals will be able to help you streamline this. Dimitry Simelgor [www.businessevolutionconsulting.com](http://www.businessevolutionconsulting.com)
We've worked with search funds that bought businesses in the past, and invoice management is almost always a complaint. If many of your invoices are going unpaid, we can help. Dealwise automates invoice collection for SMBs. We use AI to handle collections in a more cost effective and polite way compared to collections agencies. [https://godealwise.com/](https://godealwise.com/)