Will Invoicing Move to Mobile Apps?

As long as there have been buyers and sellers, there have been ways to record business transactions. Invoicing has come a long way from clay tablets and increasingly from paper. Mobile invoicing has been exploding in popularity over the world since smartphones became powerful and ubiquitous enough to become a one-stop-shop for the entire sales cycle.

 

Smartphones are everywhere. In the short time they’ve been out, there are now 1.2 billion active mobile-broadband subscriptions worldwide, a 45% increase annually over the last four years. For most of the world, mobile-broadband is the only option available and outnumbers fixed-broadband connections 2:1. With this huge explosion of growth, it makes sense that app developers would lean upon this network to provide easier ways for customers to buy products through their smartphones. With six billion cellular subscriptions in the world, it’s very likely that this growth trend will continue as aging phones are replaced with smartphones.

 

For merchants, mobile-invoicing apps provide a secure way to handle their records. There are other advantages as well. These apps reduce paper usage dramatically and automatically save customer histories and payment statuses for later analysis. They also allow a merchant to bill a customer anytime and for the customer to respond very quickly with a payment just by tapping a few buttons. As these applications get integrated into sales sites it’ll be just like Internet shopping is today: quick and convenient for both parties.

 

It’s a win for both sides. Merchants gain the power of selling directly to the mobile-broadband network and having it handle all the paperwork of invoicing. Consumers are able to quickly pay for purchases without fumbling for a debit card.  Mobile invoicing will replace traditional invoicing methods within the next five years.  However, before you prepare for this newly potential invoicing trend, it may behoove you to still keep your normally invoicing means until the more concrete methods are introduced.  When our society has finally gone completely mobile, the need will arise for invoicing on the go since many transactions will occur face-to-face as opposed to over phone lines or the internet.

 

One can only predict what the future of paperless invoicing will offer for businesses now, and in the future. The current infrastructure that paperless invoicing gives to businesses seamlessly integrates into software packages like Quicken and even Microsoft Excel; it would take these two companies developing the same package on the Cloud system for easy storage of pending invoicing while offering easy to fill in templates that are understood across the board.  Until such a time persists, we must dream of what paper free invoicing will be like in the future and enjoy the software solutions we have now.

 

Greg H., passionate about online marketing, promoting the search of lost loved ones and knowing about people’s past, shows his affinity for the internet through his writings.  Currently, a major portion of time is spent helping people perform a free email search to find individuals as well as helping people to locate numbers through a cell phone numbers search process that utilizes Free Phone Tracer to hunt for numbers.