Getting paid

The problem

Invoicing took 5 hours a week. Every order had to become an invoice, every invoice had to reach the right person, and someone had to chase the money.

What I built

1. Each order becomes a QuickBooks invoice, and its PDF is made once. Printing it later calls up that same invoice, never a new copy.
2. Customers pay by bank transfer from a link. No cards on wholesale invoices, on purpose, because card fees would eat the margin.
3. Customers can turn on autopay themselves. Their bank details go to QuickBooks and aren't kept. The owner only ever sees the last four digits.
4. Autopay accounts are charged the same Friday their weekly email goes out, which pulls the cash in a week sooner.

What went wrong

My first plan for getting pay links was to send each invoice to a throwaway address. That would have readdressed every invoice to the throwaway. The link was there the whole time. You just have to ask QuickBooks for it.

QuickBooks also doesn't announce a failed bank payment, and some fail days later. So the system checks every 6 hours. Failures come to the owner, and the owner handles them personally.

What changed

Invoicing went from 5 hours a week to under 30 minutes.