HACKER Q&A
📣 MountBridge

What is the easiest and cheapest way to manage payments not manually?


I have a startup in the field of automated trading. It has invoices for both hardware and software, which are sent separately. With the growth of the audience, I have a problem with invoices. Especially at the end of the month it's like an increasing headache.

I have to manually search for each customer's card, look for the tariff plan that they use, the number of days of using the service, what discounts and promotions apply to them, and so on. I also need to keep in mind various personal arrangements.

Moreover, after sending invoices, I have to manually check the transfer of money, sometimes several times a day. If the money has not been received from the customer, I personally contact them again and check whether the invoice has been lost.

I'm thinking about the option of using billing platforms. I am currently considering ChargeBee or Rainex on top of Stripe. I've looked through Stripe and feel that just the platform isn't enough for complex management of payments, subscriptions and other options.

Have you ever experienced the same pain in your business?

  👤 sixhobbits Accepted Answer ✓
Programmers / tech people consistently underestimate how much manual work there is in finance. All finance is a shiny UI on top of a busy back office of people emailing Excel files around and printing them out and circling or highlighting bits of them.

Sounds like you should hire a finance associate/book keeper/accountant/personal assistant/CFO depending on the exact extent and complexity of the work you describe to carry on doing it (or something similar) on your behalf.

👤 x86x87
You have to lookup the plan manually... By looking up the card? (PCI compliance anyone?)

Imho you don't need payments management, you need a proper way to do billing automatically.

You know the plan, discounts, promotions. Personal agreememts have to be kept track off just like a discount. You have the credit card on file? Charge at s specific date the amount owned. Send the invoice electronically ahead of the charge happening and educate your clients to contact you when something is off. Spread out the process throughout the month if you have a lot of customers.

👤 brudgers
You're at the point where you have very specific requirements and the point where you need expertise.

Delegate the task to your book-keeper or accountant.

That probably means finding one.

It certainly means spending money.

If that's a problem, raise your prices because book-keeping and accounting are a cost of doing business.

Good luck.

👤 ensemblehq
It’s a problem I’ve seen and faced personally in my business albeit the invoicing rules are less complexed. Even then, it’s been tricky to find anything that provides enough automation and flexibility for me to override changes. I’m currently assessing whether it’s feasible to automate the workflow with minimal code. It won’t be fully end-to-end automation - it might be just enough that there will be components here and there with some human intervention.
👤 augasur
Have you thought about using Paddle? It takes both PayPal and CC. Also takes care of the taxes.

P.S. Could you tell me more about your trading startup? Any links to check out?

👤 melihatstripe
Hi - my name is Melih, and I work in Stripe Billing. I'd love to understand more about your scenario, and why you think Stripe Billing wouldn't work - if you're up for sharing the feedback.

Feel free to email me at melih@stripe.com, and we can connect in the new year.

👤 PaulHoule
That’s definitely a problem I’ve heard people Ask HN about before. It is one of those problems that vendors like to call out. My first hunch is that the problem of implementing it in general is harder than coding up a specific policy, but if the general solution is done right it should come out ahead.
👤 pestatije
In the olden days they'd hire an accountant. Not the cheapest, but arguably the easiest.
👤 bjacobt
Why not write some python code to automate it using cronjobs?

I’m bootstrapping and I have python code that connects to my credit card processor, banks via api, vendors, slack and email using postmark.

End of the month the script generates invoices, emails them to customer/charge customers if credit card is tokenized. Then wait until payment is received in the bank. After which everything is reconciled.

Any exceptions I get a slack notification.