Hi,
I was wondering what is the average going rate for a billing clerk / sales help. I am kind of relcuant to have someone else do the billing but it is getting to be too much and I could use some help. Anyone know a good place that I could find someone to do this (for example a company outsources billing issue would be good or how to find an individual that does it). Any tips on this would be appericated.

No one knows huh?

I can tell you personally my wife does almost 100% of my sales/billing realted things.. It was quite a bit of work when we were doing everything manually into an access database, setting up accounts manually etc.. We just got modernbill a few weeks ago and this has already improved everything alot, Accounts are set up in a couple clicks and you can just run a nightly batch feature to process your customers.. This is one area of the business I hope that we can always handle by ourself because it is again your $$$ and I want to make sure I know where every penny is going.

Originally posted by OKIHost
I can tell you personally my wife does almost 100% of my sales/billing realted things.. It was quite a bit of work when we were doing everything manually into an access database, setting up accounts manually etc.. We just got modernbill a few weeks ago and this has already improved everything alot, Accounts are set up in a couple clicks and you can just run a nightly batch feature to process your customers.. This is one area of the business I hope that we can always handle by ourself because it is again your $$$ and I want to make sure I know where every penny is going.

Thanks for your response. You sound like me I am very reluctant to have someone else handle billing issues as I would like to know where every penny is going as well. I bought perlbill and that didn't work out at all for me and modernbill is kind of pricy and more then I need. I have custom order forms (that I have worked quite hard on and would like to keep), I just need some type of database management system so I can keep track of everything. Anyone know of any good ways to keep track of clients (some kind of backend system)?

Hmm... better yet know of anyone that can help me get organized? Can anyone reccommend a company / individual that can help setup and input data into a backend type system that will help me with managing clients etc.

If you do plan to hire, Its always worth paying a little extra to make sure you get someone reliable, low wages can mean low quality of work - something you could do without in the billing/sales department.

Originally posted by LCHwebHost
I was wondering what is the average going rate for a billing clerk / sales help. I am kind of relcuant to have someone else do the billing but it is getting to be too much and I could use some help. Anyone know a good place that I could find someone to do this (for example a company outsources billing issue would be good or how to find an individual that does it). You might want to consider finding a local bookkeeping firm. Check the yellow pages, your local chamber of commerce, etc. In a lot of ways it could be simpler than adding an employee, especially if you don't have "real employees" yet and want to avoid taking on things like tax witholding, unemployment, etc.

In most cities there are any number of small bookkeeping operations that would be able to take on just your billing, or even other aspects of your accounting system.

Originally posted by JayC
You might want to consider finding a local bookkeeping firm. Check the yellow pages, your local chamber of commerce, etc. In a lot of ways it could be simpler than adding an employee, especially if you don't have "real employees" yet and want to avoid taking on things like tax witholding, unemployment, etc.

In most cities there are any number of small bookkeeping operations that would be able to take on just your billing, or even other aspects of your accounting system.

Hi Jay,
Could a local booking keeping firm really manage my clients (mange all the billing data and email them to renew etc?). If so do you have a rough estimate what that would cost?

Originally posted by LCHwebHost
Hi,
I was wondering what is the average going rate for a billing clerk / sales help. I am kind of relcuant to have someone else do the billing but it is getting to be too much and I could use some help. Anyone know a good place that I could find someone to do this (for example a company outsources billing issue would be good or how to find an individual that does it). Any tips on this would be appericated.

I'd actually check out www.ubersmith.com
They can handle all of that stuff for you for pretty cheap.

I've got a person who handles my billing/collections, and he does a good job, but I dunno if thats really worth $40+ per hour though.

Originally posted by ServeForce
I'd actually check out www.ubersmith.com
They can handle all of that stuff for you for pretty cheap.

I've got a person who handles my billing/collections, and he does a good job, but I dunno if thats really worth $40+ per hour though.

Hi,
Where did you find the guy that handles all billing issues for $40 per hour? Is that a normal going rate for billing? Seems a bit high....

Originally posted by LCHwebHost
Hi,
Where did you find the guy that handles all billing issues for $40 per hour? Is that a normal going rate for billing? Seems a bit high....

Uhh, well... he collects all of my accounts :)
Never has a problem, even with customers who are having issues. (no, his name is not guido heheh)

I live in San Francisco though, rates may be higher around here heh.

Be very careful before hiring someone to do your billing. Conduct lots of interviews and extensive background checks.

For me, billing would be the very last thing in the company that I would hire someone for - I will never again let billing out of my own hands.

In 1999, I felt like you did - I had a growing hosting business (which I have since sold) that I just couldn't handle everything. I decided that, since billing was the part of the business I disliked the most, it made the most sense to hire someone. And so I did. And when she quit a month later I hired somene else. And when she quit a month after that I hired someone else. We'll call her "Jenny" (not her real name). She worked for me just about a year before we parted ways (she officially quit, but I did absolutely nothing to stop her from leaving as I probably would have fired her within a short time anyway).

After "Jenny" left, I sat down with the billing files myself, and went through every single transaction on every single customer for the entire time "Jenny" had worked for me.

And you know what I found? Errors, mistakes, and general confusion. To the tune of over $10,000 in potential revenue that she'd just never billed for, or billed for the wrong amount. That's money you can't possibly ever collect - you can't go back to the customer a year later and say "hey, we were supposed to bill you $100 more back in June, so now you owe us that". So I had to suck it up and live with it.

But it taught me a lesson - and of all things, billing would be the last thing I ever handed off to someone else.

Now, things have changed since then. At the time we did things primarily by hand. I now use software for billing. But nonetheless, even with the software, there is enough manual work and enough room for errors that I still wouldn't do it. Not me.

If you really are set on hiring someone to do billing, hire someone who has extensive training (preferably a degree) in bookkeeping. They'll cost more, but they'll be worth it. You want someone with good attention to detail, who is good with numbers, and who will actually give a damn whether things get done right or not.

Do your homework, and hire the right person. And give them proper supervision - check on their work on a regular basis, and if there are problems don't hesitate to correct them through whatever means is appropriate. Because, I can tell you from experience that the wave of nausea, the lump at the bottom of your throat, and the pounding pounding headache that just won't go away for days after you discover you've lost over $10,000 in revenue because of employee incompetence is one of the worst feelings you can ever imagine in your professional life.

Good luck,

Jason

Originally posted by LCHwebHost
Hi,
I was wondering what is the average going rate for a billing clerk / sales help. I am kind of relcuant to have someone else do the billing but it is getting to be too much and I could use some help. Anyone know a good place that I could find someone to do this (for example a company outsources billing issue would be good or how to find an individual that does it). Any tips on this would be appericated.

How do clients pay for your service. Is there any part of your business that could be more automated? But not so much that you lose control. This may be cheaper than hired help, and it would definately cut down on paperwork.

I've used QuickBooks (its price ranges form cheap to expensive, depending on your needs, though you should be more than fine with the $200 package) to deal with accounting. I've used MB, phpM, looked into ubersmith, as well as osC for billing and they range from poor to good for billing. But they are by no means meant for accounting.

Sure I have to enter things manualy from my orders to QuickBooks, but once a customer is in, there is no more work to do as QuickBooks does support recurring billing.

Plus it tracks all other aspects of my business (hosting only makes up about 20% of all my accounting entries) and makes tax time many times easier.

As for hired help, well I'm more paranoid about anything than letting someone else do something. The online version of QuickBooks lets you assign user privldges so you can track who does waht and restrict access to certain things. Might want to look into that.

Exactly what I was going suggest. :D

Originally posted by Jason Ellis
Be very careful before hiring someone to do your billing. Conduct lots of interviews and extensive background checks.

For me, billing would be the very last thing in the company that I would hire someone for - I will never again let billing out of my own hands.

In 1999, I felt like you did - I had a growing hosting business (which I have since sold) that I just couldn't handle everything. I decided that, since billing was the part of the business I disliked the most, it made the most sense to hire someone. And so I did. And when she quit a month later I hired somene else. And when she quit a month after that I hired someone else. We'll call her "Jenny" (not her real name). She worked for me just about a year before we parted ways (she officially quit, but I did absolutely nothing to stop her from leaving as I probably would have fired her within a short time anyway).

After "Jenny" left, I sat down with the billing files myself, and went through every single transaction on every single customer for the entire time "Jenny" had worked for me.

And you know what I found? Errors, mistakes, and general confusion. To the tune of over $10,000 in potential revenue that she'd just never billed for, or billed for the wrong amount. That's money you can't possibly ever collect - you can't go back to the customer a year later and say "hey, we were supposed to bill you $100 more back in June, so now you owe us that". So I had to suck it up and live with it.

But it taught me a lesson - and of all things, billing would be the last thing I ever handed off to someone else.

Now, things have changed since then. At the time we did things primarily by hand. I now use software for billing. But nonetheless, even with the software, there is enough manual work and enough room for errors that I still wouldn't do it. Not me.

If you really are set on hiring someone to do billing, hire someone who has extensive training (preferably a degree) in bookkeeping. They'll cost more, but they'll be worth it. You want someone with good attention to detail, who is good with numbers, and who will actually give a damn whether things get done right or not.

Do your homework, and hire the right person. And give them proper supervision - check on their work on a regular basis, and if there are problems don't hesitate to correct them through whatever means is appropriate. Because, I can tell you from experience that the wave of nausea, the lump at the bottom of your throat, and the pounding pounding headache that just won't go away for days after you discover you've lost over $10,000 in revenue because of employee incompetence is one of the worst feelings you can ever imagine in your professional life.

Good luck,

Jason

Jason,
Thanks for your response it really helped me decide. Sorry to hear about the $10,000 lost due to billing error, I guess you are right though; a cheap billing clerk wouldn't care too much about accuracy just as long as the partially complete... Right now i'm just using mySQL (no fancy software) even though I bought perlbill a while ago I found it didn't work too well.

And if not an experienced book keeper find somebody that you can trust.:angel: Money likes to disappear especially when it's in the 1000's of dollars. Make sure you are somewhat involved in the book keeping to ensure that the job is being done. Don't be an ENRON :D