A lot of my customers pay late. I’ve setup automated reminders through my business software, and I get bounce notifications if emails bounce so I know they didn’t bounce. I also have a copy bcc’d to an address at my domain, so I know that my software is sending them and the mail server is processing them.
A lot of my customers use a dedicated email address to receive invoices like ap@customer it’s supposed to get ingested into their system so it gets processed in a timely manner but they don’t seem to work reliably sometimes third party services are involved.
Whenever I email them manually I usually get a quick followup and they issue a check in their next cycle so that means I get it in two weeks at that point though I’m usually at net 60 instead of 30. The typical excuses I get are “this invoice isn’t in our system”, “this is the first time we’ve received it”, “please send invoice to x address” where x is the address I’m already sending them to. Or something to that effect. Sometimes I get “checks in the mail” and usually I get it a couple days to a week later when that’s the response.
Maybe they are lying but I don’t think they are because it’s widespread enough across different customers, and I don’t really think the people handling these emails have that much motive to lie. I think they just have a broken process.
Is there something else I should be doing? Has anyone else found a way to deal with this? Like I just want confirmation the invoice was received somehow. My automated followups don’t seem to do anything, at least with the ones that pay late. Other customers that pay on time I do notice payments come in right after reminders are sent, these are of course the ones that don’t have special ap@ emails.
I already have late fees listed in my standard terms and conditions but I think I’d have a hard time actually successfully charging these customers late fees, and since they pay “quickly” after I contact them it doesn’t seem like trying to charge a few percent or threatening it doesn’t seem worthwhile.
Thanks in advance!
Edits:
This is what I gleaned from the responses.
1. Make the reminder emails more aggressive and reference the potential for late fees.
2. Switch to 2/7 Net 30, and increase base prices accordingly to incentivize on time payment.
3. I think I'm also going to set my system to email invoices every week until payment.
A lot of my customers use a dedicated email address to receive invoices like ap@customer it’s supposed to get ingested into their system so it gets processed in a timely manner but they don’t seem to work reliably sometimes third party services are involved.
Whenever I email them manually I usually get a quick followup and they issue a check in their next cycle so that means I get it in two weeks at that point though I’m usually at net 60 instead of 30. The typical excuses I get are “this invoice isn’t in our system”, “this is the first time we’ve received it”, “please send invoice to x address” where x is the address I’m already sending them to. Or something to that effect. Sometimes I get “checks in the mail” and usually I get it a couple days to a week later when that’s the response.
Maybe they are lying but I don’t think they are because it’s widespread enough across different customers, and I don’t really think the people handling these emails have that much motive to lie. I think they just have a broken process.
Is there something else I should be doing? Has anyone else found a way to deal with this? Like I just want confirmation the invoice was received somehow. My automated followups don’t seem to do anything, at least with the ones that pay late. Other customers that pay on time I do notice payments come in right after reminders are sent, these are of course the ones that don’t have special ap@ emails.
I already have late fees listed in my standard terms and conditions but I think I’d have a hard time actually successfully charging these customers late fees, and since they pay “quickly” after I contact them it doesn’t seem like trying to charge a few percent or threatening it doesn’t seem worthwhile.
Thanks in advance!
Edits:
This is what I gleaned from the responses.
1. Make the reminder emails more aggressive and reference the potential for late fees.
2. Switch to 2/7 Net 30, and increase base prices accordingly to incentivize on time payment.
3. I think I'm also going to set my system to email invoices every week until payment.
