Micro Firms Losing $2B A Year By Forgetting To Invoice

U.K. FinTech Amaiz, promoting its bookkeeping and banking services app, found in a survey that roughly one-third of micro businesses have trouble with payments, according to a press release.

The survey was conducted by 3Gem in February. It showed that around 15 percent of those surveyed still only take cash. Of those businesses, 31.5 percent said they had lost business because of that fact.

Amaiz found that 34.6 percent of those surveyed said they had forgotten to invoice a client at some point, and half of the businesses surveyed said they had lost 250 pounds ($295), with almost 8 percent counting their losses at around 1,000 pounds ($1,180).

All told, micro businesses lose 875 million pounds to 1.7 billion pounds ($1 billion to $2 billion) annually by forgetting to invoice.

“We know that micro businesses and sole traders are working long hours, and bookkeeping is an added burden at the end of the working day,” said Matt Goddard, head of Acquisitions at Amaiz. “Our aim is to reduce that burden, so we carried out the research to ensure we understood their struggles.”

To combat these numbers, the company is trying to battle perceptions that card or electronic payment systems are difficult. Amaiz’s new app helps to streamline those processes and reminds businesses of invoicing so they can keep funds on track directly through the app.

Amaiz is also partnering with SumUp in order to offer clients a new mobile card reader for free, allowing instantaneous pay and the money to go straight into the user’s account. The release stated the card reader is simple to set up and has a 1.69 percent transaction charge.

Among those set to benefit from the new features are tradespeople who do work at people’s homes and depend on payment via various means. The new app allows them to get paid before they leave.

Other functions on the app let users automatically record payments digitally.