The Benefits of Outsourcing Invoice Printing and Mailing
By Paul Bobnak | June 18, 2024
Maximize Efficiency and Profitability by Outsourcing Your Invoice Printing and Mailing
Why should your business outsource the printing and mailing of invoices? To put it simply: you have enough challenges facing you every day. Your competition is, of course, a big one. But to truly increase your ability to offer a great product or service, you need to find ways to operate your business smarter.
As we’ll see in this post, there are multiple benefits you can enjoy by outsourcing invoice printing and mailing. It can save you time and money – both big factors in your bottom line. But there are additional key competencies that may best be handled by the right outsourcing partner.
Cost Savings
Cost is probably the most important consideration in any decision to outsource invoice printing and mailing. Even with inflation now decreasing, moving this expense to an outside vendor is an opportunity to guard against future increases on your balance sheet.
Reduced equipment and supply expenses
Paper and ink are two of the biggest material costs, and both increased substantially after Covid as supply readjusted to renewed demand. In addition, printing, inserting, and mailing equipment require energy, maintenance and operating space. You can’t afford to be shut down if you have a labor, software, or hardware problem that comes up in your facility.
Eliminating the need for dedicated staff
Salaries for staff positions dedicated to printing and mailing invoices can be reallocated to other functions or uses within your company.
Volume discounts from outsourcing providers
With the right workflow processes, a vendor can print invoices more affordably as part of larger press runs. And savings on postage can be unlocked by using presort as well as commingling and co-palletization services.
Improved cash flow through efficient invoicing
An outside partner that prints and mails invoices efficiently ensures that customers receive them on a stable schedule and make their payments more quickly. This also provides you with a more predictable cash flow and thereby improves your operations and planning.
Time Savings
Companies and organizations with an in-plant find challenges to their workday for invoice printing and mailing tasks. Outsourcing offers solutions that result in the timely delivery of your mail and payment of customer invoices.
Freeing up staff for core business tasks
Staff members who devote part of their work schedules every week or month for invoices can give the essential responsibilities of their jobs their full attention after a switch to an outside vendor.
Streamlined invoice processing
Outside billing means that pros with lots of experience in optimizing their workflow will print your invoices on-time, ensuring that they’ll get dropped into the mail when you want.
Faster invoice delivery
A printing and mailing partner has decades of expertise and a great working relationship with the post office. Your bills and statements will arrive in customer mailboxes more quickly and worry-free.
Reduced manual labor and errors
Because an outside vendor already has a 24/7 commitment to quality, they’ll be able to catch any problems that come up in the printing, folding, inserting, and mailing processes. Their eye for detail also gives your production staff peace of mind.
Enhanced Efficiency
Putting the printing and mailing of your transactional documents into the hands of another company lets them achieve your goals more easily.
Professional expertise and industry best practices
When you outsource your invoices to the right partner, they’ll tap their technical expertise, backed by years of work for satisfied customers.
Access to the latest technology and equipment
Outsourcing providers know what hardware and software works best to make their printing and mailing more efficient and more impactful for their customers.
Scalability to handle fluctuations in invoice volume
When you work with a printing and mailing company, they’ll have the capacity to scale up or scale down mail volume for your invoices based on seasonality or other factors. Their size and expertise gives them the ability to more easily schedule production and labor around your needs.
Integration with existing accounting systems
Outside printing companies can easily integrate your accounting system and the data it holds with their production workflow. This ensures that there are no bottlenecks to overcome in printing and mailing.
Improved Accuracy and Compliance
An outsourcing vendor can exceed the level of quality of an in-house setup because focusing on accuracy in every aspect of printing and mailing is already in their wheelhouse for every kind of job.
Minimized human errors in printing and mailing
A printing and mailing provider optimizes processes to ensure fewer errors. This kind of commitment means no downtime for your mail, and is also an opportunity to polish your brand image for customers. Their experience in producing mail of all kinds gives them an expert eye for design or other changes that result in more engaging invoices.
Adherence to industry regulations and standards
Regulated industries have strict data security requirements. Outsourcing invoices to a printing and mailing vendor ensures compliance with mandates as they change.
Accurate and timely delivery of invoices
You don’t want invoices being printed and mailed to incorrect or outdated addresses. To avoid losing money and bad customer service, your real-time (or near real-time) data should be aligned with a vendor’s workflow and production process.
Detailed tracking and reporting
Your printing and mailing partner can provide invoice transparency to help you track your mail as it enters the mail stream. With tracking tools and Informed Visibility, you’ll be able to monitor the progress of your invoices and plan production jobs.
Increased Security and Data Protection
Safety and security are two ongoing concerns of many companies with personal data. And most companies and organizations do worry about these challenges in an ever-changing landscape even if they’re well-equipped to deal with them.
Secure handling of sensitive financial information
Full-service professional outsourcing companies treat customer data and its privacy well, ensuring that customers feel and are secure. They put in place robust and thorough cutting-edge security measures and procedures. These guarantee the confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility of your customers’ information along the full production process.
Compliance with data privacy regulations
As noted previously, regulated industries have strict data security requirements. Outsourcing invoices to a printing and mailing vendor ensures compliance with mandates as they change, and gives your customers peace of mind.
Disaster recovery and business continuity planning
Outsourcing the printing and mailing of your invoices provides backup and always-on service for natural disasters, power losses, data breaches, and other business-threatening events. The right vendor prioritizes protecting your data with robust hardware and software access controls and protocols.
Choosing the Right Outsourcing Partner
Making informed decisions about outsourcing invoice printing and mailing can help you optimize your mailing strategies and develop capabilities that in-house work just can’t match.
With the right partner, you’ll be able to have invoices that will:
Cut costs
Save time
Improve efficiency
Ensure accuracy and compliance
Increase data security
And in achieving all of these benefits, you’ll also be able to focus more on the core business and activities of your company or organization.
Wrapping it up
Here at mailing.com, we’re a trusted printing and mailing company with the expertise and technology to produce and mail your invoices securely, affordably, and accurately. As a leading provider of mission-critical transactional mailing services, we work with some of the largest and most demanding clients in the country to offer a comprehensive, end-to-end solution with unmatched customer service. Contact us for more details on how we can successfully partner with you.