Paperless billing is an interesting concept. The basis revolves around your existing billing system. Utility bills and bank statements are commonly replaced with paperless billing. All you have to do is fill out a simple form requesting that physical paperwork be replaced with the paperless option. There are many advantages and disadvantages to going paperless.
Advantages are usually noted as related to the environment in that paperless billing results in less trees being cut down for paper. Another advantage is that you won’t receive as much mail in your mail box and identity theft is virtually eliminated this way. Plus, online companies offering estatements often offer recipients various incentives for signing up for paperless statements.
Here’s a look at four of the main disadvantages to paperless billing statements:
1 – You Could Miss a Payment
Unless you have your own billing software, paperless statements actually make it easier for some people to forget to pay on time. This is especially true if you typically use the paper statement as your payment reminder. The alternative to this is just printing off the paperless statement you receive in your email and then use that as your payment reminder. As simple a solution as that may sound, it actually defeats the purpose of going paperless. All you have done is saved the utility company or bank the printing and mailing costs. The printing of your own estatement just shifts the printing cost to you. This means that you really haven’t saved any trees and the only people saving money are the company the bill came from.
2 – You Have More Passwords
This may not seem to be a huge issue for many but think about this for just a moment. If you sign up for paperless statements you now end up with another user name and password to use at another website. Yes, you may be able to use one of your existing user names and/or passwords, but why would you? Sometimes less is more and adding another portal you need to verify your identity with before you can proceed to pay an online bill may be just a little too much for some people. This is why billing software for business has to be user friendly from the very first step. If it isn’t, there a chances that some users are going to find it difficult navigating through your online billing system just to find a current statement, not to mention payment options.
3 – Restricted Access to Old Statements
Okay, we admit it. Somewhere we have a shoe box stuffed with old utility bills and bank statements. They may date back to long before billing software was commonplace but it was our personal system. It worked for us because we could dig into one of those boxes and find out such important data as what we used to pay for the same services a few years ago. Sure, that may not sound like an important thing but with paperless billing you don’t have access for as much historical data as you once did with paper statements – provided you kept them. The main reason why you would want to be able to produce physical copies of old statements would be for income tax purposes. There are some online billing programs that can access older statements for you, but the service usually includes a fee of some kind.
4 – Address Changes
It may not appear to be much different than with regular mail, but when your email address changes, you will have to notify all sources sending you paperless statements of the change. We know, you’d be doing the same with a change in your physical address but here’s the hitch. How many physical address changes have you had in the past five years? Compare that to the number of times you’ve changed you email address over the same time frame. One of them is going to be greater than the other. If it happens to be your email address, imagine having to contact a number of paperless billing sources frequently to update the contact information they have on file for you. Plus, during the transition from one email to another you risk missing either an estatement or a payment deadline.
How Can You Stop Paperless Billing?
If you are a business owner and you have the right billing software, paperless statements may be the most cost effective solution for your company. The key is to leave the option to your customers. Many will opt in for the paperless option simply because there already conduct a lot of business online. Customers who have experience in online banking are the most likely candidates for paperless billing.
Age also tends to play a role in the acceptance level of estatements. When this is the case, it really doesn’t matter how good the billing software for business happens to be. Some clients and customers are not going to switch because they are still comfortable with paper statements. At the same time, there are older customers who are either not computer owners or are not computer savvy enough to function within the paperless environment.
As outlined in the list above, there are also disadvantages to paperless statements. You could miss a payment deadline by not having a paper reminder or you could find yourself with a new set of user names and passwords to remember. Restricted access to older statements and the hassle of having to notify all sources when you have to change your email address following a breach of some kind just takes away some of the shine associated with going paperless. Billing software exists that makes estatements an economical decision for small and medium sized businesses. So, even though there are choices, the bottom line is that the choice to go paperless still rests entirely on your shoulders. Hopefully the information contained here helps you to make the best decision based on your individual requirements.
