Back when I started my lawn service business I relied on paper for most of my day to day operations. I used paper for invoicing, schedules, receipts, payments, etc.
You may well be aware that business have pushed for going paperless in their operations. So, as I grew my business I started to look for ways to cut costs as well and increase my net income.
One area that I noticed was in the amount of money I spent on paper products to run my business. Items such as spiral notebooks, copy paper, envelopes, postage, post it notes, and the list goes on. So I started to look for ways to reduce/eliminate the use of paper. There are three areas I’m going to share with you where going paperless benefitted my business and they are: Invoicing, Schedules, and Payments.
INVOICING
Invoicing occurred in my business at the end of the month. Expenses associated with invoicing include: Paper and ink to print the invoices, envelopes for mailing, stamps and labor.
Note: There are other expenses associated with invoicing such as a computer, printer, and software to print the invoices but we are going to stick with the above for now.
One method that has served me is the use of email to send out invoices instead of mailing them. You reduce the costs in buying paper, ink, envelopes, stamps, and going to the post office to drop it off.
Now, you will have some customers that don’t have email and for those you still need to mail them. One way to recuperate your cost is to charge a fee for those that don’t have email and need to mail them their invoice. For the most part I have reduced my cost considerably.
SCHEDULES
Schedules, whether hand written or printed out, is another way to go paperless. When I started in this business I used to hand write all my schedules on a spiral notebook. Then I moved to printing them followed by using an app on my smartphone. The app is synced with my CRM(customer relationship management) thus all the information is recorded in the field(no double entry).
PAYMENTS
Now you may be asking how is one going to go paperless with payments you may ask? In this I’m referring to checks, cash, and receipts.
When I started my lawn service business I would do the work and when I got paid I would give my customer a hand written receipt. I carried a receipt booklet with me back in the day that I had bought at Walmart. The checks and cash payments would then be recorded and deposited in my bank.
When I switched to a CRM is when I stopped with the receipts completely and reduced my cash/check deposits. It started when I could use my CRM to charge a customers credit card for the work I performed.
Slowly I moved my current and future customers to a credit card method of payment. By moving towards only accepting credit cards for various reasons, we have eliminated the cost of recording the transactions and then going to the bank to make the deposit. I’m setup to where once we charge for the service/product, the transaction is recorded and the money is deposited in the bank account automatically. 
Now there are fees in doing it the credit card way but you make that up and more in time saved in recording the transactions and the visit to the bank. Plus you reduce/eliminate your losses in accounts receivables(customers not paying).
Invoicing, schedules, and payments are but few of the ways that by going paperless has saved my business money. Let us know if you have gone paperless and how it’s impacted your business.