In here you will find the most common features of Pinch your industry competitors use, plus some ideas on how to navigate the specific type of payers you will have.
As a Pinch merchants you most likely have the same goal as everyone else. That is, getting cash flow certainty. Whether it's by making it easier for your customers to pay, or getting your customers to pay automatically, the goal is to collect more payments with less chasing.
The way that Pinch can help a business achieve this is with auto-debit. The most common form of auto-debit that we enable, are pre-approvals. These are digital agreements between a merchant and a paying customer, which allows the merchant to automatically deduct money from the customer whenever the merchant raises an invoice. Pre-approvals are used to collect more than half of the payments we collect for our 1000+ merchants and are used across every industry we service.
Speaking of industries we service, just by looking back at our most recent 100 merchant signups you'll find businesses from more than 20 different sectors. It's safe to say we're not a niche provider!
Below is a breakdown of some of the business types found in our last 100 merchant sign-ups and the specific features that are frequently utilised by them. Finding the one most like you is a great place to start when it comes to configuring Pinch.
- Home service providers - home cleaners, gardeners and pool maintenance companies:
Our home services merchants love the standard pre-approvals feature because it works great for both parties. Merchants get paid on time and the home owners don't have to think about anything at all. Because neither party really needs to communicate with each other all that much it makes both parties lives easier.
Some of our pool maintenance merchants find a great use for pre-approvals as they allows them to do variable recurring payments. These are ongoing payments that change in value each time, such as pool chemicals costs. This is not something most other auto-debit products are capable of, with most only supporting recurring payments of the same amount.
This is also a great feature for cleaners, lawnmowing companies and basically any company that have variable recurring payments. Find out how to set up pre-approvals here. - Business advisories, accountants and bookkeepers:
Like most of our merchants financial advisors are heavy pre-approvals users for the same reasons as above. Occasionally they will have retainer based service models too. so our subscriptions feature is often used to offer different levels of service and prevent the need for raising invoices at all. How to set up a subscription. - Allied healthcare and community wellness professionals including in home aged care providers, meals on wheels services, speech pathologists, physiotherapists, specialists and more:
Pre-approvals and subscriptions are both often used in the health industry. Subscriptions are particularly useful for any healthcare provider who does a program of sessions where the cost per session doesn't change.
It's the administrative power of Pinch that many of these companies start to really appreciate. We find they often use Pinch to collect payments and set up pre-approvals on behalf of their customers, either in store or over the phone. This makes a lot of sense as asking in person before or after a session is usually the easiest way to get them over the line or get your invoice paid. Here's how to use Pinch to collect payments and set up pre-approvals as an admin user. - Professional services such as offshoring agencies, recruiters, architects, printing companies, IT companies, marketing agencies and software development firms:
Quite similar to accountancies, these companies often use pre-approvals for collecting variable recurring payments such as web design agencies collecting hosting and maintenance payments. They also often have retainer solutions in place so the subscriptions feature is quite handy, especially if the amounts stay the same ongoing. - Tech companies, marketplace websites and software as a service companies:
We have many tech companies who use Pinch's payment technology inside their own apps, and even more that simply bill through Pinch outside their software. The Payment Plans and Subscriptions features really shine for merchants like this. - School tutors and music teachers:
These companies are very similar to home services companies in terms of their use. The biggest challenge is that their invoices are usually bigger than a law mow, so it can be tougher to persuade customers to use pre-approvals. Merchants like these really need to check out this article. - Wholesalers across a range of industries including pharmaceuticals, food and beverage and fashion:
Wholesalers get a lot of value out of Pinch which is why we have an integration with DEAR Inventory. When Pinch is correctly integrated with DEAR and Xero, you can automate collecting payments from purchase orders with no manual intervention. Email hello@getpinch.com.au if you want to ask us to integrate with a different inventory management system. - Real estate agencies:
Pinch works great for collecting on marketing costs during the sales process, and is a good solution for collecting rental payments too, especially now that we can switch on a feature to allow you to download an ABA File. This way you can send payments to multiple different accounts even if you're using a single accounting file. Read about how it works. - Tradies such as electricians and builders:
Pinch is not only good for collecting on routine work, but project work too. You can set up variable payment plans with fixed amounts over any number of payments you like. Which means you can set up a plan with a different down payment number to the rest of the series. Want to take 50% up front then two 25% payments? You can!
Tradies of this type also get benefit regularly from allowing customers to pay off overdue existing invoices in smaller chunks to help them clear off bad debt. - Sporting clubs, community organisations and churches:
Automating the collection of subscription fees is very easy within Pinch, either with the pre-approvals feature or the payment plans and subscriptions. We have dozens of sports clubs, business clubs, churches and even a rideshare club using Pinch!
The challenges in each of these sectors are different, however everyone is tied together by a similar goal which is to achieve more cash flow certainty by reducing the amount of people you let pay you based on trust.
Pinch is designed to do this in a range of ways but not all Pinch features apply to each industry as you can see above. To help you understand how to apply Pinch best in each industry, we've broken it down into your payer types because at the end of the day, it comes down to what type of payer you're dealing with, to determine the path of least resistance in getting them to adopt Pinch and importantly, to let you automatically debit them.
Payer 1 - The Business Owner
Industries
Professional services, agencies, tradies, wholesalers, advisors and accountancies.
Understanding Why They Pay You Late
If you are invoicing a business where the owner themselves manages the purse strings, it can be a real challenge to get auto-debit in place. Heck, it can be a challenge to even get paid sometimes. Remember, that it's quite likely they have similar issues managing cash flow that you do and as a result are remiss to let money automatically flow out of their business even if it's contracted and confirmed work. They just want to be able to pay you, when they can afford to. This is obviously not viable, they need to pay you when you do the work, but unfortunately here in Australia it's very normal for small business owners to approach paying their bills this way.
The issue here is not one of complete non payment, but payers like this are among the most commonly late with payment and that can be stressful enough when it comes to your own cash flow. Fortunately if you just put yourself in their shoes, it really should help you navigate the issue.
Possibly the worst case scenario to navigate is having a relationship with a different person at the company than the owner, with an owner suffering financial difficulty. You send the invoices to accounts, but someone else is the one that hired you. This is common and really challenging because at the end of the day the actual person paying the bill doesn't have a human face to the name, and they can play willfully ignorant to knowing the pain they're probably causing you.
Mitigating the Concern
A lot of it will come down to the relationship you have with the owner directly.
Establishing a good relationship with the actual person who is responsible for paying you is the best solution, so try to make that happen if you can. Making that person your primary contact allows you to keep touch with them, slowly develop a relationship and eventually get them to agree to your auto-debit request.
A clever way to go about getting them over the line might even be to refer Pinch to them yourself. A business owner bad at paying their bills is very often a business owner who is bad at getting their bills paid. If you show them Pinch, and they sign up the way you did, that Pinch request you made becomes a lot more credible and harder to say no to.
The good thing about these types of businesses is they are always small businesses, so policy and standard payment terms are usually not something they will hide behind.
Ultimately perseverance is key with these types of customers. They may not do it the first time, but the longer that you are their supplier and the more they trust you, the more likely they are to accept it. Relationship and tenure is the key here. The quicker you can get the relationship to a good place the better.
Summary
- The same cash flow uncertainty you have, they have
- They won't agree to give you consent to autopay without some prep-work or a long established trust in you, unless they are already pretty comfortable with autopay and a cash rich business
- There are no rules that prevent you from getting the auto-debit in play
- It helps to be friendly with the boss
- Patience and repeat requests are usually needed.
Payer 2 - Employee
Industries
All B2B except sole traders.
Understanding Why They Pay You Late
They will usually only actually pay you late if they are either struggling to keep on top of their workflow, or there are some serious cash flow issues occurring in the business. Because of this, they are often not as much of a problem for you as payers.
Mitigating the Concern
They can be among the more difficult to get to agree to pre-approvals for a couple of reasons:
- They may not have the authority to do so or think they don't
- Worried their boss will get mad at them
- Cash flow uncertainty
- Personal biases against technology, and/or security concerns stemming from paranoia.
A lot of the same things that apply above apply here. Being well liked by them will help a lot, as well making a lot of effort to mitigate any concerns they have, and have a really good bedside manner in your approach. You will find that if the business is quite used to signing up on automatic payments for your services you won't have any concerns, but if you are the only one, it will be really tough.
You will find that accounts payable officers in small businesses tend to lean conservative, anti-efficiency and want to manually handle a lot more than accounts payable officers in large corps. This is generally for a few reasons; they tend to be older employees, they tend to echo the conservative sentiment of their employers and they tend to be quite insecure about making executive decisions. The issue in large corps will be "sorry we have strict payment terms and have to pay you exactly this way."
Summary
- Everything about the Business Owner applies here, as well as ...
- They have a lot less certainty themselves in their role, so tend to be even more conservative than business owners except for in really large corps
- In large corps they will often be opposed to your pre-approval request based on policy, which this article might help with.
Payer 3 - Wealthy home manager
Industries
Home services, accountants, sporting and community clubs, healthcare, gyms, tradies.
Understanding Why They Pay You Late
Apathy is the main culprit here. Wealthy people usually miss payment deadlines quite simply because of forgetfulness. Occasionally it's spite, but assuming you have a good relationship with your payer it is quite likely simply being too busy, or you not reminding them. This makes them perfect pre-approval users.
Mitigating the Concern
Generally the primary concerns from payers of this type will come from the ones who are most interested in managing their financial affairs, similarly to business owners (who they quite often are themselves). They might prefer not to automatically pay you if they feel more comfortable managing their bill payments themselves manually, but honestly these customers are the least of your trouble. All others will either sign-up or have some idiosyncratic opposition based on paranoia around being hacked, or some ethical concern. Unfortunately this is probably the toughest one to overcome, but you can find some answers to that here.
But the good ones, are easy work, just be prepared to ask a few times. Chasing a late payment over the phone, collecting it manually and opting them into autodebit while taking the payment, works great for these types of payer.
You will go along way with being tolerant and patient with these people. They won't respond to firmness or disregarding their opinions very well.
Summary
- Some of the easiest candidates for pre-approval are in this cohort
- Some of the laziest and most frustrating payers also are
- Be prepared to hear some quite silly objections and handle them with care
- Be prepared to ask plenty of times and needing to catch them in the right specific moment.
Payer 4 - Modest home manager (tenants etc.)
Industries
Same as the above.
Understanding Why They Pay You Late
Fear of running out of cash at an inopportune moment is the biggest worry here, but they are also probably the type of end customer that have the largest share of their payments automated already.
Mitigating the Concern
While these payers probably have the most valid argument against giving you a pre-approval, their willingness to do so is higher than the other payer types. That's because they tend to be younger, they tend to have far less time to manage financial affairs and they tend to be less conservative when it comes to adopting technological solutions. Anything that makes their life easier will be viewed with some form of acceptance.
You should not get too many objections, outside of the very common ones about security of data, but the main one about their financial surety can easily be offset by using subscriptions instead of pre-approvals, so the amounts are consistently the same, or by setting a maximum debit threshold on the customer details screen, to give them confidence that only payments under a certain limit will be taken. 
Summary
- The easiest payer to get onto pre-approval
- Have the most valid concerns
- Objections are quite straightforward to handle
- Will be the largest percentage of your customer base that will agree straight away.