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I know you are really busy and don't have time for this right now. I know it seems like almost daily you're getting bombarded with things you must know or things you must do.
I too have felt the same way. Being a business owner or business manager, your responsibilities are endless and sometimes you feel like putting your head in the sand or quitting. You’re either busy with your family duties, practicing your profession, finding more client work, finding new clients or trying to find good employees to help you get the client work done.
There is a very good chance the last thing on your mind is the ever-increasing receivables or non-payment of invoices.
This is a sign though that something isn’t quite right. Sometimes, it’s a sign that your team is not following up with clients trying to get payment. However, it’s more likely a sign that your invoice and/or statement emails are not being delivered to your clients’ accounts payable team.
With our suppliers many of them have this problem. I also see our clients’ suppliers have the same problem. They’re sending out invoice or statement emails and have not correctly configured their email system to ensure the emails will be delivered.
So that raises a question. If your invoices are not getting delivered, and therefore seen by your clients, how can you expect them to pay you?
So, I know you will now have figured out, in the best of cases, this will cause either late payment or non-payment of invoices.
Well, if you’re a practice manager or general manager of a firm and you have no cash flow, you’ll end up not being able to pay yourself or the rest of the team. Further you may end up without a job because the firm must close down.
If you’re an equity principal, partner or director and you have no cash flow you’ll not be able to pay yourself and you’ll have to close the firm down.
So that raises another question, What could you do with the money gained by getting invoices paid on time or at all?
What if we look at the other end of the scale where you could suffer reputation damage and damage to your family’s livelihood?
Naturally, and it goes without saying, this is not the worst of it. Unfortunately, if the above is happening, it’s likely that you will suffer impersonation attempts that could lead to a client paying an altered invoice or being sent a malicious email from “you” that causes them significant emotional and financial pain.
Earlier this year, a prospective client we met with to help them with IT services and cyber security, who did not move forward with us suffered this fate. The director of the firm had his account hacked and “sent” out malicious emails to everyone in his contact list. Now this law firm is based in a rural community and reputation damage in country towns, where everyone knows everyone’s business, could really cripple his family’s ability to pay the bills and keep his firm afloat. Can you afford to have this happen to you?
Just prior to this email being sent, the same firm was affected by a scam we’ve seen quite often, where the “hackers” pretend they have footage of you doing embarrassing things and you must pay bitcoin to stop them releasing it to your contact list, thus saving your reputation. This email was only able to be sent and received because of an incorrectly configured email system.
Recently, we’ve also seen one of Australia’s law societies affected by an issue where they had to send out an email informing their database that emails coming from 2 supposed addresses were not legitimate. The irony of this is that the email they sent was picked up as spam, because… you guessed it… an incorrectly configured email system.
All these examples are preventable, which given their impact, should be boiling your blood. As a business owner I know it does mine. I know you’re busy with other priorities and this is not something you enjoy. Would it be inconsiderate to ask when does it become irresponsible to not inspect what you expect?
Want help preventing reputation damage, protecting your family’s livelihood and getting paid? Go to www.myinfotechpartner.com.au/initialconsult/ or give us a call on 08 6244 2556.
My Info Tech Partner is a trusted IT Services and IT Support provider in Perth that specialises in protecting reputations and family’s livelihoods with advanced cyber security services for legal, accounting and financial services firms and is the only one that offers a $10,000 “Never Pay the Ransom” Guarantee.
