[LRUG] To be paid or not to be paid, that is the question (sort of)

George Palmer george.palmer at gmail.com
Mon Jan 7 07:20:54 PST 2013


If the monthly fee you charge is high I'd be tempted to say that the
data from the previous company will be removed as it's a separate
company (if indeed it's just the people that have moved across not the
intellectual property, otherwise it suggests a takeover).  If it's a
low monthly fee it's not worth the hassle*

One of the biggest surprises I found starting a SaSS service was just
how much people take the piss with payments.  We have it all automated
and they get 14 days notice with 4 warning emails sent out over that
period.  It's amazing how many people suddenly get their payment
details sorted once their account suspends.  Getting setup to accept
debit/credit cards is a hassle but it's worth it once you're up and
running.  The only companies I accept direct debits from are large
multinationals and I manually check those with online banking each
month.

* quick mental trick - know how much you earn per hour and multiply
this out by the time taken to work out if something is worth doing

George

On 7 January 2013 15:03, Jeremy Longley <jeremy.longley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Were the accounts of the people in Company A in the name of the company or
> the individuals?  Presumably the former.
>
> I would guess you have a clause in your Ts&Cs that terminates the contract
> if the company goes into liquidation.  This doesn't particularly help you,
> though; and re-signing those accounts with Company B won't buy you much
> (unless you have any (eg) set-up costs associated with a new account).
>
> The question you have to ask yourself is what is the risk of losing the new
> account vs the money that you are owed.  You can play hard-ball with Company
> B, but only if they have something substantial to lose if you terminate the
> existing accounts.
>
> Welcome to the world of business :-/
>
> Jeremy
>
>
> On 7 January 2013 14:56, Andrew Stewart <boss at airbladesoftware.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello El Ruggers,
>>
>> I run an SaaS webapp.  I invoice customers (who are companies) monthly and
>> they pay by BACS.
>>
>> One of my customers, Customer A, has three months' unpaid invoices.
>> Customer A recently went into liquidation and their staff was employed by
>> another company, Customer B.  The employees from Customer A who now work at
>> Customer B are continuing to use their account in my webapp.
>>
>> Customer B is happy to pay invoices henceforward but they refuse to pay
>> Customer A's invoices because they did not take over Customer A's
>> liabilities.  I spoke to the administrator of Customer A's liquidation and
>> they said that realistically there's no prospect of my unpaid invoices being
>> paid out of the liquidation.
>>
>> Here's my question: should I press Customer B for Customer A's unpaid
>> invoices on the grounds that they are using an account which has unpaid
>> invoices?  After all Customer B may not have taken on Customer A's
>> liabilities but they have taken on A's data.  Or should I let it go?
>>
>> (Either way I'll be stricter about unpaid invoices in future ;)
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>> Andy Stewart
>>
>>
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>
>
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-- 
George Palmer
@georgio_1999
http://www.digitaldeliveryapp.com



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