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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?

#101

Post by mcherm »

mrgriscom wrote: post #91
raverbashing wrote: post #32

Funny how in the US paying with cheques is still a thing Cheques are practically non-existent in Europe. SEPA all the way.

Seriously, it's fucking embarrassing. To send me money, someone writes numbers on a piece of paper. That piece of paper is physically transported hundreds/thousands of miles to me. Then I have to write on the piece of paper. Then I take a picture of the piece of paper and upload it, where someone reads the numbers written on the piece of paper, and actually transfers the money. Is this really how the world works in 2…

Well, if I'm sending out payments then that's several days of "float" where I'm still earning interest on the money because all those physical pieces of paper are still in transit. So given the choice, why wouldn't I go with the less efficient process?

(That's a rhetorical question - but feel free to answer it if you feel so inclined.)

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

#102

Post by serverhorror »

swombat wrote: post #88
eigenvector wrote: post #81

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. 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…

Nice I didn't even know such a thing existed...now off to find and try something that seems acceptable.

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

#103

Post by yitchelle »

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.

This one really makes me laugh. Can I use the same excuse when I am late in delivering your order?

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

#104

Post by yitchelle »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #34
raverbashing wrote: post #32

Funny how in the US paying with cheques is still a thing Cheques are practically non-existent in Europe. SEPA all the way.

I liked the system in New Zealand, in the US it's still the 1970's for payments.

Can you elaborate the New Zealand's system?

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

#105

Post by kurtismorrison »

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…

Interesting point re: T&Cs because I often find that the PAPERWORK is the worst part of enterprise deals - not the time to get paid.

It's shocking how many big companies will send me book-length MSAs, T&Cs, etc and expect me to just sign it. A lot of them have some scary-sounding clauses in them.

It seems especially weird for a buyer of a SaaS product to have their own T&Cs.

Recently I was asked to sign a 30 page T&C doc from a potential customer - and I just said no. To my surprise, they said "ok no problem, we'll just use yours".

I tried this again with 2 other customers, and so far it's worked 2 out of 3 times. On the one that didn't, I'm still kind of in limbo - waiting for a PO nearly a month later... Based on your comment, it sounds like I'll be waiting a while :\

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

#107

Post by mobiplayer »

yitchelle wrote: post #103
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. This one really makes me laugh. Can I use the same excuse when I am late in delivering your order?

Yes, you can but they're still the big fish and we are the small one. Chances are you'll get hurt and they won't. Pick your battles wisely.

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

#108

Post by outworlder »

eitally wrote: post #73
smackfu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software procurement also tends to get hung up on EULAs because someone decided they want a fancy indemnification section that that lawyers at EnterpriseCorp don't want to agree to.

Just to use an example fresh in my mind... we're a Google Apps customer and bought a bunch of Lucidchart licenses to help wean people off Visio. One of the things Lucidchart does that, if we had known about it beforehand, we'd have written into our terms, is that they refuse to delete accounts even after a person's Google account is deleted, so we end up paying for licenses for terminated employees unless we physical…

> and then pay a guy to go do the needful

I've seen that sentence several times in different contexts. Is it in current US usage?

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

#109

Post by smackfu »

outworlder wrote: post #108
eitally wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to use an example fresh in my mind... we're a Google Apps customer and bought a bunch of Lucidchart licenses to help wean people off Visio. One of the things Lucidchart does that, if we had known about it beforehand, we'd have written into our terms, is that they refuse to delete accounts even after a person's Google account is deleted, so we end up paying for licenses for terminated employees unless we physical…

> and then pay a guy to go do the needful I've seen that sentence several times in different contexts. Is it in current US usage?

Only among people who deal with Indian software engineers, in my experience.

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

#110

Post by pc86 »

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…

> putting a "after 60 days a 20% late fee is applied" seems like a good way to either get paid or get more revenue

That is laughable. The only thing it gets you is ignored. The most aggressive late fee I've ever seen agreed to in any contract is 1.5%/mo starting on day 121 (original was 2%/mo on day 31). Any company I've worked for that has had more than $100MM or so in revenue has simply refused to sign any contract with any sort of late payment penalty, but they would sign 2/10 net 30 contracts all day long. Some companies even require that their accounting department follow any terms for a discount.

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