For anyone that is trying to run a business, you’ll know that late payments are far more than just a frustration.
It’s a familiar story for lots of companies; outstanding bills can add pressure to your finances, tighten cash flow and have the potential to really cripple a business when left to build up.
This was certainly the case for a client of ours that came to us for help when their aged debtors’ list kept continuing to grow.
For them, it wasn’t just a case of needing to achieve a healthier cash flow for the business, they were also really concerned about the impact it was having on their customer relationships. It’s not easy to maintain a balance between allowing late payments to continue on versus chasing customers to pay. How tough is ‘too tough’ to chase? While they didn’t want to jeopardise any future work opportunities, it very often felt like their efforts were having no impact at all.
Late payments here and there soon snowballed into a growing aged debtors’ list that was putting pressure on the business. Breaking the cycle of regular late payments can be really hard to do, and for our client, it wasn’t until they started using Paycada for the first time that their entire invoicing process really began to change for the better.
Customer relations in safe hands
One of the main concerns our client had when they first came to us was that they were worried about how using a third party may impact negatively on their client/customer relations.
It’s understandable; no one wants the customer relationships that they have built up over time to be damaged by a third party coming in and adopting a brutish approach.
Thankfully, Paycada doesn’t operate in this way and, as our client soon discovered, every communication is designed to be tone-appropriate, cleverly written, and with the aim not to scare customers into settling invoices, but to facilitate the conversation and provide quick and easy means of payment.
Having Paycada handle their communications took the pressure off our client’s shoulders and in this instance it had a really positive effect, even on their serial late payers who rarely paid on time; “Paycada helped me get paid in a time-efficient manner, by a customer who would have otherwise delayed payment further.”
The day getting paid got a whole lot easier
The bottom line is if you want your customers to pay on time, it’s really important the whole process is set up to be as quick, easy and pain-free as possible…for all sides!
Payment reminders that Paycada sends to customers contains a link that will take them direct to a payment portal where they can settle their invoices in less than a few minutes.
As well as allowing customers to be able to preview all outstanding invoices at once and pay multiple bills in one go, it also remembers customer details so the process gets faster each time.
Easy payment, combined with strategic reminders that are sent out in advance of any payment deadlines (not just once the invoice becomes overdue) proved to be a game changer for our client:
“As a new user of Paycada, I was very pleased to receive a payment from the first email Paycada sent out to one of our customers, with them paying instantly and reaching out to me personally to apologise for the late payment.”
If, like our client, you are struggling with late payers and a growing aged debtors’ list, please do get in touch so we can have a chat about how we can help. We’d be very happy to give you a demo of how it all works and because Paycada is free to use, you really do have nothing to lose.
