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Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

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Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

#81

Post by eigenvector »

eitally wrote: post #38
patio11 wrote: post #12

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…

> 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.

Yep. Also, small companies dealing with MegaCorps - please, just accept our terms & conditions. Raise the price by 20% if you have to compensate for whatever rights you feel our standard T&C doesn't give you, I don't really care. But if you want your own terms, then your lawyers need to talk to our lawyers and there is a 50% chance that your PO will arrive after man lands on Mars.

Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

#82

Post by throwaway8490 »

curiously wrote: post #74

here's a related question. what if you are a sole proprietor? do I start incorporating and setting up a business bank account now before they ask for the details?

In the USA, banks will only accept one or two checks for deposit to your personal account if you're using a fictional company name before demanding you create a business account.

You don't need to incorporate to create a business account, but you have to register your fictitious name locally. Costs about $40 at various places around town and they handle all the paperwork and announcement in a newspaper.

For taxes, you just keep all receipts and file a Schedule C. When depreciating equipment, you need to know the day it was bought.

Also, check if your city requires city taxes. Some do, some don't.

Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

#83

Post by ktsmith »

eigenvector wrote: post #81
eitally wrote: post #38

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…

> 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. Yep. Also, small companies dealing with MegaCorps - please, just accept our terms & conditions. Raise the price by 20% if you have to compensate for whatever rights you feel our standard T&C doesn't give you, I don't really care. Bu…

More like raise the price by 200%. The number of overzealous indemnification clauses and other nonsense makes dealing with enterprise customers worth at least that much.

Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

#84

Post by curiously »

throwaway8490 wrote: post #82
curiously wrote: post #74

here's a related question. what if you are a sole proprietor? do I start incorporating and setting up a business bank account now before they ask for the details?

In the USA, banks will only accept one or two checks for deposit to your personal account if you're using a fictional company name before demanding you create a business account. You don't need to incorporate to create a business account, but you have to register your fictitious name locally. Costs about $40 at various places around town and they handle all the paperwork and announcement in a newspaper. For taxes, yo…

okay well im in Canada

Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

#85

Post by FooBarWidget »

eitally wrote: post #38
patio11 wrote: post #12

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…

Really? And here I always thought enterprises pay at the last minute (or late) in order benefit from inflation. If you have lots of money, then even benefiting from a 0.0001% inflation is worth it.

Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

#86

Post by andyjdavis »

rtpg wrote: post #61
patio11 wrote: post #12

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…

aren't late fees the solution to this? I don't know exactly how you have to set it up in the signing contract, but if everyone's always paying you late then putting a "after 60 days a 20% late fee is applied" seems like a good way to either get paid or get more revenue (and in any case get your invoice taken seriously). In college I was part of a junior enterprise (basically an outsourcing firm for students), and we…

In theory late fees would work well but in practice a large enterprise dealing with a small supplier is likely to do one of two things:

1) Flat out refuse to agree to late fees. They get removed from the deal or the whole thing is off.

2) Simply pay the original amount and ignore whatever late fees you have added on. Don't like it? "Speak to accounts", "we don't have a process for that", "these fees aren't on the paperwork that I have here", "speak to your point of contact", "I don't know anything about that", repeat.

It all comes down to who needs who more. A large company has a mountain of suppliers to choose from and they are often fairly easy to replace. They have potential suppliers trying to get in the door all day long so if you don't like it you can show yourself out. Meanwhile a small supplier only has a relatively small set of large customers they could possibly do business with and they are very hard to get.

Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

#87

Post by [deleted] »

rtpg wrote: post #61
patio11 wrote: post #12

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…

aren't late fees the solution to this? I don't know exactly how you have to set it up in the signing contract, but if everyone's always paying you late then putting a "after 60 days a 20% late fee is applied" seems like a good way to either get paid or get more revenue (and in any case get your invoice taken seriously). In college I was part of a junior enterprise (basically an outsourcing firm for students), and we…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

#88

Post by swombat »

eigenvector wrote: post #81
eitally wrote: post #38

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…

> 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. Yep. Also, small companies dealing with MegaCorps - please, just accept our terms & conditions. Raise the price by 20% if you have to compensate for whatever rights you feel our standard T&C doesn't give you, I don't really care. Bu…

Helpfully, if you have raised the prices by even as little as 20%, you can easily use that extra margin to pay for an invoice factoring company who will pay you the invoice upfront - for a fee, but a fee that's usually much less than 20%.

Examples in the UK: https://marketinvoice.com/ http://www.platformblack.com/ or even http://granttree.co.uk itself (though we don't advertise this at the moment - our power-up fund does extend to invoice factoring for startups with no trading history).

Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

#89

Post by antaviana »

eitally wrote: post #38
patio11 wrote: post #12

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…

I really hate it when Enterprise customers force us to compete unfaithfully with banks to finance them.

Re: Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

#90

Post by swombat »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #85
eitally wrote: post #38

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…

Really? And here I always thought enterprises pay at the last minute (or late) in order benefit from inflation. If you have lots of money, then even benefiting from a 0.0001% inflation is worth it.

It's a combo of all those things: inflation, improving the cash flow cycle, and even internal rate of return (i.e. for those 60 days the money is hopefully being used in a capital efficient manner).
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