Rapid Billing – Rapid Invoicing with equinegenie

It makes me smile when I see the QuickBooks’ advertisement that says you get paid faster using QuickBooks. We all know, you get paid when your customer decides to pay you – hopefully sooner than later. It has nothing to do with QuickBooks, or any other invoicing or accounting system. What the advertisement should say is you can get an invoice to a customer faster if you use QuickBooks. But that is not necessarily true either. You can do the same with equineGenie, and maybe even faster than QuickBooks. Using equineGenie you don’t have to make multiple entries for the same transaction. For example, if you use QuickBooks when a customer’s horse has farrier work you have to record the farrier work in your horse recordkeeping software and then, you still have to enter the farrier’s charge into QuickBooks. Using equineGenie you only make one entry including the farrier charge and then, all associated horse, farrier and financial records are updated and analyzed for income, expense, margin contribution and profit. QuickBooks doesn’t tell you how much it costs to keep your horse or a customer’s horse, or if you need to raise your prices or reduce expenses – but, equineGenie does! Using QuickBooks is like riding your horse backwards. You only know where you have been. If something bad happens it is like getting knocked off your horse because you didn’t see the low hanging branch. equineGenie lets you know where you have been, where you are going, and watches out for any low hanging branches.

Rapid Billing

equineGenie’s rapid billing uses two types of billing logs to generate customer invoice line item charges. The two types are horse billing logs for horse charges and customer billing logs for customer charges. Why two types of billing logs? The billing logs assist in determining the income and expense for each horse and each customer.

The horse billing logs are for horse specific charges like board, farrier work, vaccinations, training, specific feed requests, etc. The horse charges entered on a horse billing log are charged to a horse’s owner or owners assigned on the horse ownership screen. When a horse has more than one owner, the horse charges are automatically split between owners based an owner’s ownership percentage. Any horse charge generates a line item charge for that horse on its owner’s invoice. Horse charges can be entered for individual horses or all horses with the same charge on the same date. A good example is monthly board. If a horse has a special board rate, the horse’s board would be entered on the Horse Billing Log. If the remaining horses all have the same board rate, their board can be entered on the Multiple Horse Billing Log where each horse would be charged the same board on the same date. Any change to a horse charge entered on the Multiple Horse Billing Log can be changed by recalling the horse, the charge date and the charge on the individual Horse Billing Log. Besides generating customer invoice line items, the horse billing logs provide horse income information to the business.

The customer billing logs are for customer specific charges like riding lessons, trailer parking, tack room rental, seminars or clinics, summer camp, etc. A customer charge generates a line item charge for the customer’s invoice. Customer charges can be entered for individual customers or all customers with the same charge on the same date. A good example is daily riding lesson charges. If a student has a special type of lesson and or a different charge the lesson would be entered on the Customer Billing Log. If the remaining students all have the same lesson type and charge, their lesson can be entered on the Multiple Customer Billing Log. Any change to a customer’s charge entered on the Multiple Customer Billing Log can be changed by recalling the customer, the charge date and the charge on the individual Customer Billing Log. If a business horse is used in providing a customer service, the horse can be identified on the Customer Billing Log. Any horse identified on the Customer Billing Log is credited with the income the service or product provides the business. For example, this enables you to track how much income your lesson horses are contributing to your business. A horse cannot be identified on the Multiple Customer Billing Log. If the horse used in providing a service or product needs to be credited with the income, the customer charge needs to be entered on the individual Customer Billing Log.

Horse and customer charges can be added throughout a billing cycle. They can also be added anytime if they were missed in a previous billing cycle and still be invoiced in the current invoice cycle. All horse and customer charges are automatically entered in the customer’s receivables. A customer’s account balance displayed on their invoice is the net of their horse and customer charges minus any payments received prior to the beginning of their next billing/invoice cycle.

Rapid Invoicing

equineGenie’s rapid invoicing has two invoice selections. One is for invoicing individual customers and the other is for invoicing All Customers on the same date with the same invoicing period. The line item charges entered on the horse and customer billing logs are available to invoice an individual customer or all customers.

The line items included in a customer’s invoice are determined by the invoicing period. The invoicing period identified can be any length of time. Once a line item has been invoiced it is not available to be invoiced again. This allows you to go back and invoice line item charges that were not previously invoiced without duplicating charges.

When using the individual invoicing, equineGenie allows you to accept line item charges individually, charge line item charges real time or accept all line item charges at once. You can also generate a PDF of the invoice with or without a customer’s account balance, and email the invoice directly to your customer from within equineGenie. The invoice is saved in an equineGenie folder in your system documents. From there, you can move the invoice to any file folder in your file system.

The Invoice All Customers enables all customers or selected customers to be invoiced at the same time. All line items in the identified invoicing period are included in the selected customers’ invoices. You can generate a PDF of the invoices with and without the customers’ account balances and email all the invoices directly to the selected customers. The invoices are also saved in an equineGenie folder in your system documents. From there, you can move the invoices to any file folder in your file system.

The equineGenie rapid billing and invoicing saves many hours that it generally takes a business to enter their horse and customer charges and invoice their customers. There is little to no data entry using equineGenie. The majority of entries are dropdown selections from the services and products previous set up, and automatic calculations done by equineGenie. This includes the correct taxes applied to taxable items. One equineGenie user who bills more than 400 customers a month says that their monthly billing and invoicing time was reduced from more than a day to less than two hours using equineGenie.

To be successful in a horse business does not require a finance education, but it does require business discipline and an understanding of what your financials are telling you. This understanding will enable you to make better business decisions.  A good Horse Business Management System will eliminate duplicate entries, do the calculations for you, and analyze and report the results with comments or suggestions. A good Horse Business Management System will save you valuable time you can then use to improve your business.  I encourage you to investigate how equineGenie not only helps you manage and care for your horses, but helps you manage your business operations and support your customers, so you be financially successful. Remember, equineGenie tracks, manages, analyzes, teaches and raises your business I.Q.

‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’

Bob Valentine, PhD

President, GenieCo, Inc.

PO Box 271924

Ft. Collins, CO 80527

www.equinegenie.com

Dr. Valentine taught Equine Business to graduating seniors in the Equine Science Department at Colorado State University. He has been involved in the horse business for many years.