Simple Teachworks Tools To Encourage Timely Invoice Payments

Ensuring timely invoice payments is important for the smooth operation of your tutoring company. Unpaid invoices can disrupt cash flow and create administrative burdens. However, with the right features and strategies, you can encourage your customers to pay their invoices promptly.

In this article, we’ll explore some powerful features that can help your tutoring company collect payments in a timely manner.

Encourage Payment By Reminding Customers About Their Invoices

Everyone gets busy or sidetracked from time to time and sometimes your customers may forget to pay their invoices. In this situation, providing them with a gentle reminder that payment is due can be an effective method. You can enable the “Invoice Due Reminder” setting on the Account Settings page in your account to send an automatic reminder to customers once their invoice becomes overdue.

Some customers may continue to miss payments for a variety of reasons, and in this case, you may want to provide some additional reminders and information. The following features allow you to do this in Teachworks.

1. Send Invoice Due Reminders

You can enable the option to send “Invoice Due Reminders” by going to Account & Settings > Account Settings > Invoice Settings > Invoice Due Reminder > Enabled. Enabling this option will send a reminder to customers as soon as their invoices become due.

You can also send additional reminders manually by going to the Invoices table, selecting the checkbox next to the relevant invoice(s) and choosing the “Send Invoice Reminder” option. 

2. Show Unpaid Invoices Setting

On the account settings page in your Teachworks account, you will find the “Show Unpaid Invoices” setting under the “Invoice Settings” section. If you’ve enabled this setting, a customer will see their oldest 3 overdue invoices at the bottom of the invoice they’re viewing. This feature makes it clear to customers what they owe and makes it easy to navigate to overdue invoices for payment. 

3. Custom Invoice Emails Add-on

With the Custom Invoice Emails Add-on, you can create customized emails to accompany your invoices, making it ideal for sending multiple reminders. For example, if you send an invoice due reminder, you might set up an additional reminder to send after another week of non-payment. After this, you might send a final notice before discontinuing lessons. These personalized templates ensure effective communication and encourage timely payments.

Encourage Payment By Offering Flexible Payment Options

Your customers are more likely to pay their invoices on time if you offer convenient methods for them to pay. While some may prefer to pay cash, others may prefer to pay online when they have a gap in their schedule.

The Teachworks Stripe Integration makes it possible for your customers to pay their invoices by credit card, or you can process credit card payments on their behalf. It also supports direct deposit options including ACH, SEPA, BECS and iDEAL.

Encourage Payment By Requiring It Upfront

The most effective way to ensure invoices are paid on time, is to collect payment upfront. All of our billing methods can be used when invoicing upfront. If you invoice for individual lessons, you can pull future lessons on to invoices. You can also generate invoices for flat fees and packages ahead of lessons.

In addition, we also have the following features that support this workflow:

1. Paying through the Website Booking Plugin: If you’re using our Stripe Integration, you can add a payment section to the Website Booking Plugin to collect upfront payments. Customers will only be able to complete their booking if they pay upfront. An invoice is generated in the background and a payment is recorded automatically.

2. Package Purchases Add-on: The Package Purchases Add-on allows your customers to purchase packages themselves from a link that can be included in the Low Package Balance Alert email. Once they have purchased additional package lessons or hours, you can proceed with scheduling. 

Teachworks provides tutoring companies with powerful tools to ensure timely invoice payments. The “Invoice Due Reminder” and Custom Invoice Emails Add-on serve as effective reminders, while the “Show Unpaid Invoices” feature simplifies overdue payment navigation. Offering flexible payment options through Teachworks Stripe Integration enhances convenience for customers, and collecting payments upfront streamlines operations. With these features, tutoring businesses can optimize invoicing and maintain a healthy cash flow.

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