Can a Remittance Envelope Speed Up Your Client’s Payment?

For a small business, cash flow is like the blood circulatory system—both are vital to survival. Just as we don’t want anything to impede the circulation of blood in our bodies, we seek to eliminate anything that could hold up the flow of cash in our business. The faster you get payments from your clients, the sooner you can concentrate on planning your budget and further operations. Prompt payments help your business work smoothly, as having the right amount of funds on hand at the right time can be critical.

That’s why using tools that speed up the payment process is a smart idea. One such tool is the complete automation of invoicing that DocuSend’s cloud-based mailroom provides.

One of DocuSend’s most useful features is that it allows you to add a remittance envelope to your bill. About 40 percent of our customers opt to use it. Such a small detail as a remittance envelope can make a great difference to your bottom line.

Providing the Remittance Envelope Lends a Helping Hand

Sometimes waiting and guessing whether the client has forgotten to pay or the invoice was lost goes on for weeks. The time when the client drops the envelope with the check in the mailbox depends on quite a few factors that you can't influence. The customer may have cash flow problems of their own or simply be distracted by some personal life circumstance.

But sometimes the reason is simpler: They have no suitable envelope. It adds extra time to wait for an order of mailing supplies to be delivered, or to make a trip to the store or post office. And not wanting to make the trip for just one item, the customer has unfinished tasks that need to be completed before the trip… We could go on, remembering the reasons we've all been in a similar situation.

Is there a 100% sure way to get the customer to pay faster? Of course not. But at least it is possible to give them a helping hand by taking care of the remittance envelope in advance.

Reason #1: It’s Convenient

Let’s imagine you ran out of sugar, and you urgently need to bake a cake for the birthday party. So you are going to your neighbor to ask them to give you some. It would be logical to take a container with you to have something to put the sugar in without waiting for your neighbor to find a container for you that they are not concerned about getting back

Same with money. Including a remittance envelope with the invoice for mailing back the payment is just rational. In the DocuSend cloud-based mailroom, in addition to reducing extra manual work for you by printing out and distributing your invoices, we give you the option to add a classic white #9 window envelope with each invoice. Your customers just need to insert the remittance stub correctly so the area with the remittance address is seen through the window, add their check, seal it up, apply postage and drop it in the mailbox. What could be easier?

Your clients will appreciate the convenience, and an envelope of this type doesn’t weight much—it’s the equivalent of one paper sheet and is just right send for sending checks.

Selecting perforated paper instead of plain makes it even more convenient—customers can just tear off the part with the address and required information, and keep the rest to track their payment history.

Reason #2: You’ll Look More Professional

Everyone wants to make a good professional impression on their clients. Thinking about details in advance is considered a characteristic of true business people and is also good manners, so the remittance envelope is a nice idea. Saving your customers time and money in this way is a sign of respect that will not cost you very much at all if you are using DocuSend: it adds only 4 cents per envelope.

When you mail invoices via DocuSend, there will be no need for your client to write or type the address manually. This eliminates the risk of mistakes in the address. If the remittance envelope option is selected, we print the remittance address directly on the invoice, on the front or flip side of the sheet, or on an added cover page. Depending on the document’s template, the program will find the best solution for return address placement so it will align with the window of the #9 envelope.

With DocuSend’s Automation, Payment Can Arrive Even Faster

The power of automation is amazing. An online cloud-based mailing solution eliminates all the manual labor and buying postage, so besides reducing the time when you can expect payment from your clients, you can also minimize the time you take to prepare your financial documents for mailing. In fact, DocuSend is so quick and comfortable to use that the whole invoicing process is reduced to a few minutes to print your preaddressed documents to PDF, upload them to the mailroom, review your order, and pay online.

New technologies are a great help when it comes to speeding up any process. As we have seen, cash flow is no exception. Automated mailing greatly accelerates the process, so your invoices are ready to be mailed as quickly as possible. You can completely eliminate printing, folding, applying postage, and stuffing envelopes from your workday. When you first upload to DocuSend, you select whether to include a remittance envelope, and the system gives you an option to select the recipient’s mailing address and the remit to address or to type them in. For future uploads, it will remember the remittance address information for you.

You can also select color or black and white printing, one- or two-sided printing, certified mail, or HIPAA compliancy, and you can even send your documents abroad or via our secure email solution with the ability to see if your client opened their invoice in a secure link. With time, you can notice how much the power of automation influences your cash flow.

We can’t cure all cases of delayed payment, but providing a remittance envelope can increase the chances to get paid in a timely manner.