An e-invoicing app: Need of Indian SMEs to avoid capital mismanagement

By Ashwani Rathore, CEO & Co-Founder, SpiderG
There are about 40 million small and medium businesses in India which deal with approximately 11 billion invoices in a year, but the common problem amongst them is that they are drowning under the paper trail for tracking their finances. Currently the biggest problem for SMEs is working capital mismanagement, which arises due to lack of on the go information into one’s business and its transitions with customers and vendors.

Entrepreneurs need to keep a tab on everyday deals, they require a management information system report to track all transactions and even need to keep track of all business related conversations for updates and follow-ups. Most of that is currently done manually. Indian SMEs are also spending lot of time and energy on making invoices, manually uploading them on the company system and following up on payments and deals causes’ massive waste of time, but since small businesses don’t have a lot of money to spend on expensive technology/system, an e-invoicing app can be a best fit for this problem.

An e-invoicing app can help SMEs to electronically transact and communicate. They can share their all transaction data with their owners, general managers, accountants, purchase and finance teams ensuring clean reconciliation of all transactions.

An e-invoicing app with the below mentioned salient features will make Indian SMEs free from manual pen and paper work.
• e-Transactions
a. Exchange intelligent invoices, POs
b. Easy track of all sent & received documents
c. Repeat entry of same data not needed at receiver side -eliminates errors
d. Automatic matching of PO with Invoice
e. Tally & ERP integration drastically reduces processing time
• Doc-Chat
f. Chat over any sent/received document
g. All chats should be document specific to ensure easy tracking and retrieval
h. Facility to add your colleagues to the chat for faster issue redressal
i. Chat categorized into internal and external chats to maintain confidentiality

• Cash-Cal
j. Consolidated information of receivables & payables in calendar view
k. Send and receive automated reminders to pay and receive payments
l. Easily manage working capital on day, week & month basis

• Activity stream
a. Activity Stream should shows status of all incoming and outgoing Invoices and other documents.
b. Status of Payments received and given should also be shown in Activity Stream

• Expense Recorder
a. This is to record all kinds of company specific expenses
b. Expenses done for company purpose like travel expense, Raw material purchase or supplies by various employees should get recorded on the app
c. Should allow to create company specific expense categories
d. All the expenses are sent to approval to company admin and once approved, the expense is recorded
e. All these recorded expense should be synced directly with Tally or SAP using connectors
f. Facility to record payment type and method
g. User can take screen shots of bills and upload as proof of expense
h. Most recent expenses recorded should be shown on top of the list
• Dashboard
a. Dashboard is an information management tool used to track KPIs, metrics, and other key data points relevant to your business, department, or specific process
b. Dashboards are customized for different business and different needs. Dashboard should also customizable as per role e.g. different dashboard for the Sales team & different forthe finance team
c. Dashboard can also show data from Tally or SAP if connectors are installed
d. It should give instant information about what is happening in your company, your areas of strength, and your areas for improvement

As mobile devices has become increasingly integral in user’s everyday life this kind of e-invoicing app will enable SMEs to exchange invoices, purchase orders and other documents with vendors and relevant stakeholders. In the near future IT will play major role for SMEs in India and this kind of IT adaption will be the key to success for SMEs.