How much time do you spend each month invoicing your clients? How about following up with those who are slow to pay? If you’re like most professionals –freelance, consultant or otherwise– time spent on billing and collection can really add up, stealing your attention away from other tasks essential to building and maintaining your business.
Fortunately, Due can help. RewardExpert recently spoke with John Rampton, founder and CEO, about how Due’s seamless solutions are changing the payment landscape for businesses of all sizes.
Designed to Standardize the Invoicing Process
In 2013, Rampton was running a digital agency that was invoiced by hundreds of contractors and vendors each month. Tracking and payment became a real headache because the invoicing methods were inconsistent, with different parties using different software to generate invoice documents. Rampton decided to build a solution: software that would standardize the invoicing process.
After his agency gave access to the software to its contractors and vendors, a surprising thing happened. “We started to notice that they were invoicing their other customers with the software as well,” Rampton recalled. “Six to 12 months in, we were sending out hundreds of thousands of invoices a month. It had become a real business. So, we purchased Due.com and rebranded.”
The rebranded company launched in 2015 providing free online invoicing software. Since then, the company has added a variety of paid services as well including debit and credit card processing and eCash.
A Suite of Helpful Services
Rampton said that Due’s customers include freelancers, contractors, small business owners and companies of all sizes. “We now work with hundreds if not thousands of large enterprises,” he added.
Due’s original online invoicing service remains very popular with customers, helping professionals spend more of their time focusing on making money rather than collecting it. An entirely free service, it includes unlimited customized invoices, recurring invoice options, automated late fees and payment reminders, an easy-to-use dashboard, and integration with PayPal and Stripe.
“We really make invoicing easy,” Rampton said. “We automatically fill in your company information, the invoice number and due date. You can put your logo in there and set up recurring invoicing. It will do automatic reminders and late notices. You never have to remember to do that, which makes it easier as a small business owner.”
Due’s payment processing service enables debit and credit card payment options connected to each invoice. “You can have that as an option rather than having to wait for a check or 10 days for a PayPal payment to go through,” Rampton added. Processing rates start as low as 2.8 percent with no per-transaction cost or other hidden fees added. Fraud prevention and chargeback protection are included.
Business owners who don’t just invoice but also need to pay their own contractors, vendors or employees can use Due’s eCash service to generate ACH transactions. “It’s like a digital check,” Rampton explained. “You basically write a digital check out to somebody and the money goes from your bank account to their bank account.”
Freelancers and contractors can also use the eCash service to get paid by their own clients through ACH. “Unlike some of the other services out there, we’ll put that cash straight into your bank account,” Rampton added. “You don’t have to remember to go in and cash it out. You bill your customer, they pay and that’s it.”
Superior Security Features
Anytime bank account, debit card or credit card data is involved in a transaction, security is obviously a concern. Due’s services are fully PCI compliant, which Rampton said means that there is both external and internal auditing of the company’s servers to ensure there are no vulnerabilities. Manual inspections are also conducted.
“We also follow all the latest tax practices and KYC, which is Know Your Customer,” Rampton added. In addition, “We store your credit card information and email address on separate servers. It’s all encrypted, and if someone gets access to one, they can’t access the other,” he said. This reduces the chances that stolen data can actually be used by the hackers.
“Newer companies might not do that,” Rampton noted. “They might keep everything in one place.”
Payment Processing That’s Affordable for Everyone
In addition to their industry-leading security features, Rampton said Due’s customers choose the company over their competitors because they’re cost conscious.
“We are a cheaper option,” he explained. “We charge a flat 2.8 percent on each payment transaction. We don’t charge another 30 cents per transaction, so you don’t have to batch your payments to avoid it or worry about processing a smaller transaction.”
Rampton noted that this is particularly attractive to Due’s customers who are selling less expensive products and services. “If you’re selling an item for less than $15 online, paying 30 cents on that transaction is going to take away your profitability,” he said. “We don’t require that, and it’s a very strong selling point for a lot of companies.”
Additional per-transaction fees charged by Due’s competitors also add up for large companies processing significant volumes each day.
“A good example is a company like a Lyft or an Uber,” Rampton explained. “Their average transaction is around 12 dollars. Normally, they might pay around 45 to 50 cents for the transaction. We’re just going to take around 20 cents. That can really add up when you’re looking at profits and what they can give back to their drivers. If you do the math, a million dollars multiplied by 30 cents is hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings every single day.”
More Automation Ahead
Rampton said that Due is always listening to its customers and refining its services. “We want to make it all just easier and easier,” he explained. “We’re trying to add more automation as well. For example, making it possible to pull in email so the system can automatically detect when invoices come in and a billing person just needs to press ‘approve’ to pay them. Or if you send a contract to a new customer, the information could be automatically built into a client profile. That’s all kind of on our docket right now.”