Bitcoin, overwhelmingly.
Enterprise customers? Please wake up from your wet dream.
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Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?
21–30 of 123 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?
#22Overwhelmingly: 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…
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.
Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?
#23Earlier 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.
Yea obviously. Sales absolutely hates when they get their commissions frozen because the customer hasn't paid in 3 months.
Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?
#24Earlier 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.
Do you ever consider charging more as a premium for the delay?
Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?
#25If you're a startup selling to the enterprise, I would highly encourage billing upfront. Collecting cash upfront has huge ramifications for cash flow and how fast you can grow the business.
In terms of payment, it really depends on the company and size of deal. For some companies you can send an invoice and they'll send you a check back quickly, but the larger enterprises usually will need you to fill out a PO, you'll certainly go through procurement, and then you'll be able to invoice. I've typically seen Net 30 days for payment due date, but some companies may push back to Net60.
Credit Card usually only works for smaller transactions (<$10k) or monthly recurring charges.
Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?
#26[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?
#27Earlier 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?
https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterpris...
> For example, a big company happily using the $250 a month plan could, quite possibly, be happy to upgrade to a $5,000 a month contract if you offered them the right incentive. (Twenty times as much, you ask? No, transitioning from "pocket lint" to pennies. Stop thinking like a human. Think like a corporation. Corporations are like humans whose smallest increment of currency is the largest paycheck you've ever received.)
> This is important: Enterprise pricing is discontinuous with normal pricing. If the $250 a month plan entitles you to 500 foozles and an Enterprise needs 5,000 foozles, that costs thousands or tens thousands of dollars per month. If an Enterprise only needs 500 foozles, that costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per month. If an Enterprise only needs 50 foozles, that costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per month. This is partially justified by the amount of pain you're signing up for by doing an Enterprise sales process, but is mostly just pure, naked price discrimination. Enterprises are not price conscious. Don't attempt to sell them based on your price. ( For prices customarily contemplated by software companies.)
Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?
#28Whatever the contract says. But if you have a long term deal, I would recommend quarterly, or preferably annual billing. Dealing with checks is a pain. In my experience, big co's are no more or less likely to pay on time than anyone else. But they don't tend to pay early.
If it's small recurring billing, just have them use a credit card. Even then, annual billing is preferred - it cuts down on the requests for invoices from their accounting departments in addition to the obvious cash flow advantages of collecting a year up front.
Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?
#29Overwhelmingly: 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…
Bigger company less they care about due dates on the invoice.
Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My trick of getting the money fast is to offer 2% discount, if they pay within 7 days. Great tactic. The reason this works, in some cases, is NOT because the company cares about a measly 2% of whatever they're paying, but because they may have a policy that says they _must_ accept discounts if available.
You know you're dealing with a very enterprise customer when they automatically give a discount of this nature to themselves when you bill them using their own billing system (I seem to recall MS's vendor system does this).
it did (or does). Sun did the same thing - nice discount for sun if they pay within 7 days, so everyone raised rates by that much. It was nice getting paid so quickly