Question

What costs might a business incur by not adopting e-billing (paperless) services? Is e-billing only profitable to large businesses or is it applicable to small business? Explain what might be involved in changing over to paperless billing.

Answer 1

Guidance to write answer:

Cost a business may incur by not adopting e-billing includes:

Staff/Employee cost - In case of paper billing a no. of staff members are to be employed to keep going paper work related to paper billing, from recording bills to custody to final realisation etc. So there is always a requirement of manual labour.

Storage cost - There is always a need to store huge and bulk data in hard copy in case of paper billing There are some tax compliances to be followed which requires bills with financials to be stored for a particular period of time.

Stationery cost - Paper billing require a lot of stationery items from time to time in huge quantity which includes papers, pen, ink, printing material, postage etc.

Operational Cost - With billing cycles workflows could span weeks that leaves no room for other tasks to be performed and thus increases operational costs for businesses with heavy billing operation.

E-billings is not only profitable to large businesses but also applicable to small businesses because it results in

greater security of data - Since all the data is now present on cloud there is huge security of data as compared to physical storage of data.

faster payments - It leads to faster and hustle free payments.

reduced operational cost - Since no huge manual labour is now required it results in reduced operational cost.

reduced carbon footprints - E-billing helps protecting the environment as there is now minimal use of paper and thus less paper waste which results in greater environment sustainability.

Integration of payments/reciepts with accounting software - There is no requirement to update accounts as soon as there is a payment or reciept as these are integrated in the system itself.

Conclusion states that there is always a greater benefit while implementing E-billing over Paper billing whether its a small business or large business.

To switch from paper billing to e-billing following steps may be followed:

Take everyone on board i.e communicate everybody in the organisation that they are swtiching from paper to electronic, introduce them about its benefits and the way it will save time cost and eneergy.

Organize paper documents and files, divide the workforce and scan the documents to be uploaded on cloud.

Buy a software suitable to your business requirements and other legal compliances, thereafter train employees so that they can comfortably work on that software.

Tell clients and customers that you have shifted to e-billing and how beneficial it will be for them when switched to electronic billing.