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4–14 Reduce Number of Parts in Multipart Invoices
Internet, these shoppers will find other channels for buying products and services.
However, a company called IPin has arrived at an alternative way to process pay-
ments that may attract these additional shoppers.
A company that wants to offer its customers the alternative of being able to
pay without the transmission of credit card information can use IPin’s service.
This service, which is located at www.ipin.com, allows customers to store their
credit card information in a highly secure environment at that Web site in exchange
for an IPin identification number, which they can use as a form of payment at
selected Web sites (which must set up operating agreements with IPin to use its
software to process customer transactions). This approach has the advantage of
keeping customer-specific credit card information off the Internet. Also, for those
customers who are truly paranoid about leaving their credit card information in
the hands of anyone, including IPin, it also offers the option of linking customer
payments through their IPin identification numbers to the billing statements of
selected Internet service providers or to the monthly invoices of a customer’s
phone company or wireless phone company.
This last option also yields the unique benefit of allowing a company to
charge its customers for micro-purchases (those purchases of just a few cents),
which can be summarized and billed directly to customers. This avoids the use of
credit cards, which charge minimum fees (usually 20 cents) for purchases, while
also allowing companies access to a new form of revenue—perhaps fees for access
to small amounts of data that were previously given away for free.
Cost: Installation time:

4–14 REDUCE NUMBER OF PARTS IN
MULTIPART INVOICES

Some invoices have the thickness of a small magazine when they are printed
because they have so many parts. The top copy (or even the top two copies) usually
goes to the customer, while another one goes into a file that is sorted alphabeti-
cally; another goes into a file for invoices that is sorted by invoice number, and
yet another copy may go to a different department, such as customer service, so
that they will have an additional copy on hand in case a customer calls with a
question. This plethora of invoice copies causes several problems. One is that
the printer is much more likely to jam if the number of invoice copies running
through it is too thick. Another much more serious problem is that each of those
copies must be filed away. The alphabetical copy is probably a necessary one,
since all of the shipping documentation is attached to it, but there is no excuse
for filing invoices in numerical order; they can be found just as easily by calling
them up in the computer. A final problem is that multipart forms are more
expensive.