It’s nice to think that your clients can all pay you within ten days, but the truth is, it’s not realistic. For the majority of clients, especially the small ones, you are not going to be paid until they are paid. It may sound unfair, but that is the harsh reality of it. For the larger clients, of course, they don’t rely on just a few patients, they have a larger Accounts Receivable account, so if only a percentage of patients pay on time, there is enough of a cushion for them to meet their obligations in most cases. When you start your business, you need to allow yourself enough leeway to allow for payments that may not arrive for thirty to forty five days.
Your clients are your entire basis of your business, and without them, you will not have a business. Therefore, you must be realistic in your thinking concerning billing and payments. Allow your customers at least 20 days to pay your invoice, if not thirty. This gives them a chance to recover some payments from the patients before they have to pay you. As already stated, this is not generally a problem with the larger clients, but for the small clients, it’s of great importance for you to be flexible in your billing and payment expectations. Certainly, you have bills just as your clients do, thus the reason for having a cushion when you start in business so that you will have cash flow to take care of your obligations while you are waiting for your clients to pay you.
As far as invoicing, the best way to handle that is to set aside one day each week or each month depending upon the amount of clients you have and do all of the billing for that period. It may sound like a good idea to complete the billing for a client and send the bill then, but if you are caught up in something else, you may forget whether you invoiced the client or not and either do it a second time or not do it at all. To avoid either one happening, simply set aside one day to do it all, and on that day, do not do any of your billing for clients or do the billing after you have finished for the day.