Cash flow is always an important element to track in your business. There are several ways you can improve cash flow. One way is to make it easy for your customers to pay you. While the traditional method has been for people to pay by check when they receive an invoice, with the advances of the Internet and more and more people paying bills online, customers' preferred payment methods are changing. So here are 3 ways to help you get paid faster.

• Let clients pay online.

• Intuit's Billing Solutions - you can email (or mail) invoices to clients and they can view their account online. If you use Intuit's merchant services, they can also pay online

• Intuit PaymentNetwork - This lets your clients pay you online via check - you pay only a flat rate of 50 cents per check - much less than credit cards

• Bill and Pay - another way to email invoices and receive payment by check or credit card; you can use Intuit Merchant Services or some other one. Personally, I use Bill and Pay with Intuit's merchant services. You can read my article as to why.

All 3 integrate with QuickBooks, which is usually a criteria for me.

• Accept e-checks - Intuit's Check Solutions lets you take the routing and account numbers by phone and the funds will appear in your account in 1-4 days. That addresses the old "check is in the mail" line! (You can also scan the checks into your QuickBooks so no more trips to the bank and it streamlines the payment/deposit steps.)

• Accept credit cards - I still hear businesses holding off on this one because of the fees - I was slow to accept them, too. But in the big picture, it's a small percentage of the total invoice and statistically customers are not only able to pay faster but they often buy more products/services if they can pay by credit card, so this should more than compensate for the fees. There are lots of ways you can accept credit card. Within the Intuit line of products,

• You can swipe the card if the customer is at your place of services via a terminal or a card reader attached to a computer,

• On your smartphone if you are at the client site - way cool!

• They can phone/mail their credit card number to you and you can type it into quickbooks, or

• You can even arrange to have the credit card charged monthly within the QuickBooks/Intuit service.

You'll see more on a couple of these methods in future newsletters. I love the ease of use and the integration with Intuit's merchant services.

Now when I email my invoices, my clients can choose how to pay (yes, I give them a choice).

If you would like to learn more about any of the above, contact our office. As an Intuit Solution Provider, I have access to a dedicated team of reps (as in I have their name & contact info!) and I get special pricing. If you check out Bill and Pay, use MuirAssoc for your invitation code for 1 free month.

Let me know if you have any questions.