In the last episode, we were talking turkey—practicing plain speaking about the state of sales in your company. We started with firing customers and avoiding default discounts. Now, let’s talk about remembering to invoice to close the loop on the sale.

Remembering to invoice. Does this seem strange? Of course, you are invoicing! But are you invoicing the correct amount? Your customer will let you know if you overcharge, but they aren’t as likely to come to you with undercharges. Now is an excellent time to look at your invoices for the last quarter to see if you have a chronic problem.

No one thinks they have a problem, but let’s be sure. Take a random set of invoices from the last quarter. Match the invoices to the job information. If a job has a lot of notes associated with it, set it aside; jobs that appear to have come in and flowed through go into a second group.

Take the first group and look for change orders and notes on delays. Look at the original estimate and what was billed. Were additional discounts applied? Were change charges added to the invoice if allowed by the contract? If not, why? One of the most common leaks in the financial system occurs when change orders aren’t invoiced as allowed. The second most common is when a salesperson asks for an additional discount to keep a customer happy if delivery delays occurred. Make a list and think about the impact on the bottom line.