Hey everybody,

I am new here, but pretty much would love any advice that you all could give me for managing my accounts receivable for my web hosting company.

I currently just do a bank export of what has come in, and then see whether that client has paid for the month, if not then I follow them up and get them to pay.

Sometimes it can be difficult following them up, I have about 120 clients now.

I charge monthly for web hosting, and I try to get everybody to set up an automatic payment, as that means it comes in each month with no worries at all, unless it bounces. But they could stop the AP at any time coming through and I need to chase them up again.

- BILLING COMPANY OPTION -

I have had a look into something and Debit Success seems like a good solution to my problem, they charge $2.50 per monthly transactions and $1.50 per weekly, so if I had 100 clients on this, it means would cost about $250 a month (NZD).

I normally spend a good couple of hours following up clients who haven't paid and that, so if I spent over 5 hours a month chasing everybody up and marking as paid etc then it would be well worth it.

They phone them up, write letters, and then deposit everything they have collected to my bank account instead of having heaps of small hosting income, I just get a weekly amount deposited into my bank account which Fluctuates.

What are your guys thoughts? I can't decide the best way to do it all, I use WHMCS for my billing system of course...

Thanks can everybody let me know your way of doing things?

Cheers
Sheldon

That seems like a lot of work following up on people. I would just send them an invoice through WHMCS. If they do not pay after a certain amount just cancel their account.

Hey thanks for that - yes the only thing is that sometimes I am unsure whether they have paid or not, most of them are by Bank Deposit, so it doesn't automatically mark as paid, I have to go through and check it off when it's paid etc. So I am just wondering the best way to do this.... Am very tempted to just give it all over to this billing company to manage and worry about :)

The one thing I would caution against is that once you turn this over to the billing company and they're contacting your customers, your customers are going to notice this. Some will regard it as a less personal interaction with your company. What you'll have to decide is, is that worth it? Of course, you may not want these people as customers anyway if they're always paying late. But remember that you lose a bit of the personal touch by handing this over to someone else.

It's not necessarily a bad decision, just something to think about.

Hmm, that is a good point "The Stealthy One".

They ring up as Hey it's Debit Success here on behalf of BUSINESS NAME. They also have an online form service which means I can direct clients to fill out this form, and it's a legally binding form on the internet which then automatically Debit Success will charge them. Debit Success also sends me monthly details of what they have collected, less their fees, and once again they pay it directly into my account every week. Instead of HEAPS of small transactions that do my head in. They also can go to the collections if clients don't pay, they let me know if clients need to be suspended and so on.

Well if they are depositing directly into your back account that would mean you might be exposing your routing and bank account number. Not sure how you do it but I would recommend WHMCS (www.whmcs.com) and talk your clients into registering with paypal and have the pay into your bank account. Then paypal will let whmcs billing know that your client has paid and will continue his/her service. If they don't pay then it will cancel it for you. As long as you allow whmcs do automation on your servers.

Hmm, that is a good point "The Stealthy One".

They ring up as Hey it's Debit Success here on behalf of BUSINESS NAME. They also have an online form service which means I can direct clients to fill out this form, and it's a legally binding form on the internet which then automatically Debit Success will charge them. Debit Success also sends me monthly details of what they have collected, less their fees, and once again they pay it directly into my account every week. Instead of HEAPS of small transactions that do my head in. They also can go to the collections if clients don't pay, they let me know if clients need to be suspended and so on.

you really need business automation... there are a few solutions out there that handle this nicely for hosting companies.. hsphere is one, parallels business automation (PBA) is another...

We accept payments via paypal, credit card, cheques and EFT - our systems handle it all.. EFT can be a little manual, but, it is nice in that you can submit a monthly batch, and they generate a report on what has failed - and then its a single entry in the control panel billing system to reverse the charges and then you can run a report and send a templated email to any customers whos transaction failed.. We have 1 person running our billing department on 1000s of monthly transactions..

I could not even imagine trying to do what you are doing, it must be a massive headache.. you really need and require a billing system that is integrated into your hosting operation - its the only real way to operate.. things like modernbill or WHMCS or even Ubersmith are "ok" - but, not real level integration with hosting operations - too many manual steps - but, certainly a big step up from what you are doing today..

If you go this route - look at Ubersmith.. extensive solution, easy to integrate with various hosting platforms - will handle your shopping cart, invoicing, helpdesk, etc..

Hope this helps..

In New Zealand, we don't need to worry about exposing bank account number. Also PayMate is usually used only for overseas users, so Bank Deposit or Credit card is good for me... :) I only deal with NZ people at this stage.

Well I don't see how its not a worry how the Hosting market is field with fraud these days. But if you say so. Its your business. But I still would suggest a Billing system. Make your life alot easier. Managing that many clients would be a payne. But good luck

I am using WHMCS as my billing system, which does automate things to some extend, but not with bank deposit :) Does everybody seem to just use PayPal for their web hosting??

use whmcs and turn on the suspend after 15 days over due feature, tends to make them pay, and just let it run, at 15 days they will pay or vanish.
Mine all pay - 2 reminders before due date and 3 after they can not say they did not know it was due
cheers
Ian

You need to ask your clients paying by bank transfer to send you a copy of payment by fax or email scan when it is made. Set up WHMCS to send reminders 1 day and 3 days (or 7 days) after payment is due. You definitely need to be more strict and begin suspending clients otherwise you will turn into an AR collection company instead of focusing on providing the service clients pay you for.