Shoutout to the coffee shop manager in Austin who showed me a simple fix for late payments

I stopped into this place called Brew & Board near 6th Street last Saturday and the owner was talking about how he uses a discount code for early bird orders instead of nagging people. He said offering 5% off for paying within 5 days cut his overdue invoices by half in just one month. Has anyone else tried a small discount like that to speed up payments without getting pushy?

3 comments

3 Comments

davidshah7d ago

That thing about the 5% discount within 5 days really got me thinking cause I was always against discounting stuff like that. I used to think it just eats into your profit margins and makes customers expect discounts for everything. But honestly after reading how his overdue invoices got cut in half I realized I was being stubborn for no reason. A small discount like that is basically just a tiny fee to avoid the headache of chasing people down and dealing with late payments. Its kind of like paying for peace of mind instead of stressing over every single invoice that goes past due. I might actually try that 3% or 4% on some of my slower paying clients just to see if it works.

fionat557d ago

Tbh the same pattern shows up everywhere once you start looking for it. You see it with subscriptions where paying yearly saves you a chunk versus monthly even though you're paying the same thing eventually. Also saw a plumber buddy of mine do something similar with a 2% discount for cash payments and he said it cut his card processing fees way down too. Sometimes the little trade offs are worth it just to smooth out the bumps in how money flows.

taylor_wells7d ago

Man that's a solid point about the peace of mind part. Chasing people down for money is the worst part of running a crew, no question. Might have to look into something like that myself.