41–50 of 123 posts
For context, we're early stage with a handful of initial customers, mostly small companies. Deal sizes in the five figures per year.
Overwhelmingly: Send a quote for the upcoming year, get a PO number corresponding to the quote, send an invoice referencing the PO number, wait an interminable amount of time, a check magically appears in the mail. The last one was 9 months late in paying. Enterprise life, yay. Salient point to keep in mind: the people responsible for everything that happened in that workflow after my customer passed the quote to her…
Here repping enterprises, can confirm this is how things work. But we don't pay late out of malice. Often incompetence and apathy, sure, but we don't actively set out to cheat you guys. We start our Net-X countdown clock at the very last moment, and typically that is when we start receiving the service (not when we agree to a deal). This seriously irks most vendors, but they seem to have been beaten down and conditio…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
NET 30 baby
The customer believes that it paid NET 30 ("You received the check within 30 days of us deciding to send you a check. NET 30!") and that I can speak to Legal if I want to press the issue, which (naturally) I don't. As near as I can tell, this is just priced into everyone's expectations.
I have a customer (my only semi-regular customer, sadly) that pays like clockwork. Seriously, I've learned that I can go to the mailbox 32 days after I sent an invoice and their check will be there. I hope it lasts!
My experience is that this largely depends on the procurement practices of the company and whether or not your price range is low enough to be below discretionary expense limits. The greatest feature of SaaS has been the ability to take a 50k software package and make it a 500/month subscription that people who actually need it did not have to go through the official procurement process and could simply expense it. F…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The customer believes that it paid NET 30 ("You received the check within 30 days of us deciding to send you a check. NET 30!") and that I can speak to Legal if I want to press the issue, which (naturally) I don't. As near as I can tell, this is just priced into everyone's expectations.
Do you ever consider charging more as a premium for the delay?
Overwhelmingly: Send a quote for the upcoming year, get a PO number corresponding to the quote, send an invoice referencing the PO number, wait an interminable amount of time, a check magically appears in the mail. The last one was 9 months late in paying. Enterprise life, yay. Salient point to keep in mind: the people responsible for everything that happened in that workflow after my customer passed the quote to her…
Here repping enterprises, can confirm this is how things work. But we don't pay late out of malice. Often incompetence and apathy, sure, but we don't actively set out to cheat you guys. We start our Net-X countdown clock at the very last moment, and typically that is when we start receiving the service (not when we agree to a deal). This seriously irks most vendors, but they seem to have been beaten down and conditio…
Overwhelmingly: Send a quote for the upcoming year, get a PO number corresponding to the quote, send an invoice referencing the PO number, wait an interminable amount of time, a check magically appears in the mail. The last one was 9 months late in paying. Enterprise life, yay. Salient point to keep in mind: the people responsible for everything that happened in that workflow after my customer passed the quote to her…
Here repping enterprises, can confirm this is how things work. But we don't pay late out of malice. Often incompetence and apathy, sure, but we don't actively set out to cheat you guys. We start our Net-X countdown clock at the very last moment, and typically that is when we start receiving the service (not when we agree to a deal). This seriously irks most vendors, but they seem to have been beaten down and conditio…
Invariably we have to spend a lot of time sending emails chasing late payments, and sometimes making phone calls. They always eventually pay, but it always takes a ridiculous amount of energy to get to that point.
Oh, and US customers (we are based in the UK) most often still pay by cheque (or 'check', if you are American :), which take weeks to clear and usually involve high processing fees. On the occasions where US customers pay by bank/wire transfer, they sometimes do so while specifying that we also pay their side of the transaction fees. Bad practice, and very irritating :/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here repping enterprises, can confirm this is how things work. But we don't pay late out of malice. Often incompetence and apathy, sure, but we don't actively set out to cheat you guys. We start our Net-X countdown clock at the very last moment, and typically that is when we start receiving the service (not when we agree to a deal). This seriously irks most vendors, but they seem to have been beaten down and conditio…
How does this trick save you money? I'm not really clear on the details of enterprise payments.
Example; one day 1 you provide a service to enterprise customer (the clock starts ticking), on day 2 they resell that service (with added value etc). The enterprise customer's customers either pay upfront (B2C), day 5 through 9 for customers paying by credit card, bank transfer etc, or pay on day 32 (B2B). Then on day 60 they pay you. So in the case of B2C your enterprise customer has cash in the bank earning interest for between 51 to 60 days, and for B2B customers for 28 days. So they always have a positive bank balance (no need for a rolling line of credit and risks involved), and they earn some extra cash because of it.
EDIT: further technical info.
The technical accounting term for this is positive cash flow. The opposite (paying you providers before getting paid by your customers) is obviously negative cash flow (like a old fashioned mom and pop shop; they buy the stock before their customers pay for it. Please note that modern supermarkets work nothing like this).