Small Business Blog

Intuit QuickBooks Billing Solution promises convenience and faster-paying customers. But does this service really measure up to that promise? In my experience, no. Read on for the gritty details.

One of the challenges of running your own business is finding the time to manage the details and still do the work that makes you money. If you are a graphic designer, for example, you must market, sell, bill and collect — while still finding the time to design. When your scarcest asset is time, you are attracted to services of convenience, services like the Intuit QuickBooks Billing Solution.

This service allows you to set up your invoices in QuickBooks, and then transmit them electronically to a fulfillment center. The fulfillment center then prints them, stuffs them in envelopes and mails them off for you. Having spent too many hours printing, stuffing and stamping dozens of invoices monthly, I found this service offering to be somewhat compelling. The cost is reasonable as well, and so I decided to give it a shot in March of 2008.

Cost

The cost of the billing service is $14.95 monthly plus $0.79 per invoice, which includes the printing of the invoice, plus the envelope, return envelope and postage.

Experience

I really wanted the billing service to work out; I loved setting up the invoices, clicking send and then being able to move on to other tasks. While using the billing service, we went through less paper, ink, envelopes and stamps. All good outcomes.

Unfortunately, Intuit QuickBooks Billing Solution just isn’t reliable. Customers repeatedly told us they never received their invoices. Sure, you do accept these comments with some skepticism — just like you do when a customer tells you the check is in the mail. But the number of customers claiming they didn’t get an invoice definitely increased after we started using Intuit’s solution.

The final straw came in November of 2009. We sent out a batch of invoices at the end of October. Two weeks later, we received an email from Intuit explaining that, due to a technical glitch, our invoices were not mailed. We were assured that the invoices would be mailed out by late-November.

Now when you bill your customers monthly, they get a little irked when you send them one invoice and then another a week later. But this is exactly what we had to do. Our past-due balances shot way up and our cash flow for the month fell well short of projections. Now, three months later, we are just starting to get our monthly customers caught up and our receivables back under control.

We have since canceled the billing service and are, once again, printing, stuffing and stamping our own invoices.

Here’s my quick take on the Intuit billing service: avoid it. Our experience may have been an isolated incident, but it’s the type of incident that could put some businesses out of business. If you are walking a delicate balance with your cash flow, you can’t afford any upsets.