New business apps in Office 365: Connections, Listings and Invoicing
blogs.office.com
blogs.office.com
>Microsoft Invoicing helps you quickly create professional-looking estimates and invoices, so you get paid quickly.
I can assure everyone that I normally (slowly) create manually VERY professional-looking invoices, but that doesn't in any way help me being paid quickly.
I guess they were trying to say if you can produce invoices quickly you can send them sooner which in turn might get you paid sooner - but that's me being very generous to the marketing person behind that statement. You're right, it needs to be re-worded.
Also, if clients don't pay (and it's not contractual, i.e. 30 days, 90 days) then stop serving them.
Their invoicing system may well be quick, convenient and what-not, but the actual example seems to me like any other invoice, not in any way "more professional-looking" (I believe that there are not so many ways to write down an invoice BTW) and allow me to believe that (as in the posted example) if you send an invoice:
Document Date: July 6, 2017
Due Date: July 20, 2017
it is not likely that it will be payed much earlier than July 20, 2017, particularly if the Billed to is a firm.
The whole stuff reminds me of Calvin&Hobbes and the secret weapon that no teacher can resist:
That sucks, I believe you could literally make tens of dollars doing just that! Before Microsoft corners the market with a free app in their current 17 app business bundle of course.
> Wow your clients with professional looking invoices that take only seconds to create. The best part? You’ll get paid faster, too.
I don't really understand how they figure that.
Seriously though, I'd be really worried if I was in SaaS space now. Microsoft is going after most business-relevant SaaS offerings, while providing infrastructure to others (what's going to be left?) at the same time.
I wonder at what point will this strategy be seen as monopolistic or as a threat. For example, what's stopping them from becoming THE accounting outsourcer for half of the world? First you use their accounting, next you are out. While MS investors must be in heaven now, others should be wary.
Anti-monopolistic laws probably won't kick in in USA, because MS has competitors in each space they are walking into. However, seen as a whole, one can easily see how impoverished (in terms of choice) the ecosystem is going to become.
I wonder if Connections is going to charge per mailout/campaign like the encumbants do.