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5 must-have Features in a Billing Software for Your Restaurant

Whether you own a big and fancy restaurant or a food truck, you must have an efficient billing system in place. The right restaurant billing software can take care of the billing and operation processes including ticketing, invoicing and more. This can also help in bringing down the clerical activities, especially the things that took a toll on your day-to-day operations, and help you cut unnecessary costs. A restaurant billing software has many features. However, you must be careful while selecting the one for your restaurant. To make the task easier, here are the five features you need to look for –

Inventory Management
Efficiently managing inventory is one of the most important aspects of running a successful restaurant business. It is something that you have to do on a day-to-day basis. Most of the time, restaurant owners use a pen and paper to keep track of everything while some use excel sheets.

A restaurant billing software come equipped with the inventory management system. This can automatically manage your daily stock, daily wastage, thefts, if any and other aspects customized to your business. The software will send you an alert if you are running low on a particular stock. Or are exceeding your daily wastage to avoid any major losses. It keeps a track on your inventory, and allows you to document everything you use on a daily basis.

Online Order System
Online food delivery is receiving upwards of 5 billion dollars in revenue per annum. Isn’t it then imperative that your software includes an online ordering system? With this, you no longer have to check multiple devices to know the status of their orders across platforms. Even if you use a third-party software to take orders and track it, you are likely to be juggling with many software and applications. Using a restaurant billing software that accepts orders from all applications and bills them according to your billing system, makes the entire process way easy.

Also Read: Important Key Aspect of Every Billing Software

Allow Feedback
Generally, you expect your customers to be candid with you about the experience they had with your food. But not all your customers are ever so candid. A good restaurant billing software should allow your customers to express their feedback right after they are billed.

This could come in various ways, but it works best if it is a point-to-point feedback mechanism. Customers could rank different aspects of your service on a ranking system, or a happiness system. Along with this, customers should be allowed to add additional remarks. A feedback system is a must-have feature in a restaurant billing software.

Integrations
You are probably using many software to conduct your business smoothly. This could be a CRM or marketing software to manage your clients and data well. Or it could be internal knowledge-based system, or a community software for your employees. Either way, a restaurant billing software should be connected to all these small widgets and tools for seamless communication.

Also Read: Purchase The Billing Software of Your Dreams—Top 5 tips

Cloud Based
This is important for the users on-the-go. If you are the owner of a restaurant, it is highly possible that you are not supervising physically on a daily basis. So, how do you support your team? Using a cloud-based restaurant billing software that allows you to track and analyze incoming data is exceedingly helpful in managing your sales.

List of The Best Free Invoice Software for Creatives

Simple invoice software can literally transform the business of artists, mapping out their career in the long run. There are many free invoicing tools available for creatives in the market today. For a freelancer, who struggles to put together six to seven invoices every month, this tool can be a game-changer. Most creatives use excel sheets to maintain records and keep track of the incomplete payments. However, there is a better way to do these things. With a free invoicing software, they can easily create invoices and take the pain out of the process.

Here is a list of the best invoice software that will allow you to create professional invoices. All these tools will help you scale up for your one-man business. Let’s take a look at them –

1. CloudBooksApp
2. Wave Accounting
3. Invoicera
4. Brightbook
5. ReliaBills

CloudBooksApp
CloudBooksApp is a free and easy-to-use invoicing software that will greatly benefit the freelancers. You can easily keep track of your projects using this tool. Additionally, it also allows you to track time so you know how many hours you have worked on a project. This will allow to you bill your clients accurately. This software lets you send professional invoices, automate payment reminders and accept card payments online. Another great thing about CloudBooksApp is that you can produce invoices that look 100% credible and professional. All in all, a great deal for zero dollars out of your pocket.

Also Read: Billing And Invoice Software – Link

Wave Accounting
Wave Accounting is another invoicing software that creatives can choose for advanced invoicing. Its free plan allows you to manage unlimited numbers of invoices for large number of clients. It manages all your invoices, with expense tracking making sure every billable lands directly on your invoice. This is particularly important for creatives, who are struggling with many clients every month and looking for a slightly advanced invoicing software. Although, Wave has a slightly advanced user interface, aimed at bookkeepers, but it is easy enough to be used by freelancers, who are looking for a wholesome accounting software. The best part is Wave offers a purchasable payments interface for you to process payments directly through the invoice.

Invoicera
Invoicera is an invoicing software that not only covers the needs of a freelancer but also offer additional features for those looking to scale up their business. The features include unlimited time tracking, analytics reporting, profit and loss statements. You can manage all your recurring payments through Invoicera without having to lift a finger. Invoicera as of now, only offers three clients in its free pack. However, you can customize your invoices for each client. Additionally, you get around thirty payment gateways to plug in your bank account details directly on your invoice.

Brightbook
Brightbook is a free invoicing software with an easy-to-use interface. With this, creatives and freelancers can produce professional looking invoices with a click of a button. Brightbook is known for its insightful analytics and reporting feature. It allows you to import your banking statements and build instant reports on your profit and loss statements for every month. You can use this tool to give selective access to your team on your invoicing channel.

Also Read: Important Key Aspect of Every Billing Software

ReliaBills
ReliaBills is a sophisticated invoicing software for creatives and freelancers. It helps them build last-minute invoices quickly. It has a free plan with which you can create unlimited invoices, send emails to your clients and create recurring invoices. The drawback is that you have to upgrade to premium to be able to accept payments. All in all, it is a great invoicing software for beginners.

Mistakes That Legal Billing Software Can Help You Avoid

With a legal billing software, lawyers and firms can accurately collect the payments for their time and effort. It takes care of the nuanced work. This software is optimized for the legal profession and has features like time-tracking, invoicing and accounting capabilities. Lawyers will be able to capture billable and non-billable hours. This software can make timekeeping and billing a breeze.

With this tool, lawyers and law firms can avoid the silly mistakes. When you fail to bill or invoice properly, it can cause a significant damage to your relationship with your client. Here are a few mistakes a billing software can help you avoid.

1. Mismanaging your Retainers
2. Leaving out Billables
3. Restrictive Rate Invoicing
4. Incompliance with Policies
5. One invoice for each Task

Mismanaging your Retainers
A big part of working in a law firm is billing your retainers accurately. Unfortunately, most invoicing software available are not made to facilitate retainer management. If you have a multi-disciplinary legal practice, it is important that you get hold of a legal billing software to make retainers more credible. Most law firms struggle to keep the retainer brimming and end up incurring losses. A billing software allows legal staff to track and manage retainers in a manner that notifies you instantly when the retainer funds are getting low. It automatically sends a notification to your client to fill up the funds for use.

Also Read: Important Key Aspect of Every Billing Software

Leaving out Billables
Lawyers have to spend a lot money during a case. These expenses ideally should be cared for by the client, but due to improper billing, lawyers usually end up paying them from their pocket, resulting in a loss for a law firm. A legal billing software can manage all your billables at one place. It will ensure you get paid for every penny you are spending on the client’s job. This is facilitated by two features, comprehensive expense tracking and time tracking.

Restrictive Rate Invoicing
Legal firms, unlike other businesses, have various styles of invoicing for different types of clients. Even the rates are different for every other task that they perform. There is no set standard of rates and billing. How does then a regular invoicing software is expected to manage tiered rates, without having any concept of it as such? It leads to only one thing – accounting chaos. Legal billing software are made to handle different rates and tiered rates in depth so every client is billed correctly. Attorneys can charge fees on a case-to-case, task-to-task basis with the help of a legal billing software.

Incompliance with Policies
An acute mismanagement of the policies is probably the biggest folly committed by traditional invoicing software. Legal billing is subject to many different state policies and regulations that are often missing in a regular billing software. With a legal billing software, you make credible and professional invoices that are in compliant with the policies of your state. You can directly send in your invoicing as reports without needing to make any last-minute corrections.

Also Read: Billing And Invoice Software – Link

One invoice for each Task
This is another major error that is often committed when you are using a regular invoicing software. Law firms that use a regular invoicing software end up creating a number of invoices for a particular client due to the lack of features for matter based billing. A law firm charges an array of rates depending on the task. This means you need a legal billing software that allows you to bill separately for each task within an invoice.