“Thanks so much! Great job! Send me your invoice and I’ll send you a check!”

But when, exactly, will you get that check? And what to do if you don’t get it? Small-business experts can share their wisdom on that essential part of business: getting paid in our brave new world of clicks and tweets.

Delegate

First step: Remember that not everything is your job. “Have somebody whose job it is to manage accounts receivable, who feels good when the A/R is well managed and bad if A/R is hanging around. Measure that in collection days,” says Tim Berry, founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and a business plan expert. And here’s another hint: If your business is really small, your collection person doesn’t have to be full-time. Try an accounting student from the local community college; verify credentials through the school career placement office.

But Berry also notes that sometimes an unpaid bill isn’t just an unpaid bill. “Don’t let yourself get cut off from the information that collection problems might give you.” Was there a problem? Some unhappy customers might just let the bill slide to the bottom of the pile rather than complain. So you and your collection person, Berry says, should “have safeguards and alerts to separate A/R problems from strategy.”

Digitize

Of course, to have accounts receivable, you need invoices. “Make it easy, as easy as possible,” Berry says. “Send your invoices electronically with a link to the payment facility. Keep it all clickable. The easier the credit card payment, the faster the cash flow.”

Maybe you’re still in the ink-on-paper world when it comes to the bills you hand out. But going digital can pay dividends.

For the ultimate in right-now invoicing, mobile card readers on smartphones or tablets can produce an invoice, process the payment and email a receipt right on the job site. Payment systems such as Square (www.squareup.com) charge by the invoice like a credit card swipe fee, but also offer reports and can generate reminders. Square also offers appointment scheduling and sales reports with variable levels of access for different people in your business and integrates with certain bookkeeping systems. If you’re in the market for the organization and analytics Square offers, it might justify Square’s slightly higher per-transaction fee.

Intuit (www.intuit.com) offers point-of-sale transactions that tie into its QuickBooks bookkeeping system; the online payment tool PayPal (www.paypal.com) provides a similar system. QuickBooks will also accept transactions from Square and PayPal.

Amazon.com, the online retailer of absolutely everything (OK, maybe not a hydroexcavator), now offers its own point-of-sale system, Amazon Local Register (localregister.amazon.com). All these systems – just like credit card processors – charge a per-transaction fee.

Take plastic

Even without mobile card readers, credit card acceptance is just about essential. “The processing or handling fee for accepting payments by credit card is a small price to pay compared to writing off a bad debt and trying to recover from that loss,” says Kim R. Brown, a certified public accountant and principal at Mattina, Kent & Gibbons, P.C.

“The use of credit cards for receipt of payment has dramatically increased, and for good reason. If you accept and process a credit card for payment, you know that if the charge on the card is approved you will receive payment,” Brown says.

With credit card acceptance comes inevitable security concerns; it’s hard to look at the credit card terminal the same way after reading about data breaches at major retailers like Target and Home Depot.

One route to increased safeguards for customer data lies through EMV cards – short for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, a global standard for integrated circuit cards or “chip cards,” as distinguished from the magnetic strip cards most of us have in our wallets. The major card companies now offer chip cards, usually as “chip and PIN cards,” requiring the customer to use a PIN at the point of sale rather than signing a receipt.

As an incentive for major banks to issue EMV cards and merchants to invest in the proper point-of-sale equipment to accept them, this October the card networks will institute a fraud liability shift. If a consumer’s card is involved in fraud, liability will fall on the party that didn’t upgrade to EMV: either the bank issuing the card or the merchant accepting it. For a FAQ on chip card technology, see https://www.chasepaymentech.com/faq_emv_chip_card_technology.html.

Stay in touch

For regular customers who prefer to pay by check, Berry says, “Keep it on the surface in the relationship with customers and clients, up front, that you need working capital, and getting paid is related.” Prompt communication between your accounts receivable person and a customer lagging with a payment is essential.

“Accounts receivable needs to be monitored very closely,” says Brown. “Statements need to go out timely and communication with the customer needs to occur when payment terms have been exceeded.”

Berry adds: “Keep it in the context of a good relationship with client or customer. Nobody pays before a month. Watch for the normal pattern and worry about it when the normal pattern is broken.”

And when that pattern gets broken and your accounts receivable manager reports that the customer is no longer taking calls and you’re considering staking out the customer’s house, Brown says, “Don’t kid yourself; if it is noncollectable, write it off. Carrying a lot of uncollectable accounts on your balance sheet distorts your financial condition.”

In these cases, again, regular communication with your accountant is critical. Brown notes that “if the business is on an accrual basis, you must attempt to collect prior to [any] write off for a tax deduction.”

As always, no single system is perfect for all businesses. Use what works well for your typical customer and your business style – and may all your customers pay in 15 days.