

Show HN: Because chasing your customers for money sucks. We phone – you get paid - matmcf
http://invoicehunter.com

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indepayment
Thanks Matt. That's a great point that collecting debts takes a lot of time
and persistence- and lots of freelancers and independent workers would pay
someone to do it. Kudos. No one Accounts Receivable Managemnt for freelancers
is a growing need and if you can do it right would be awsome.

I've taken a deep dive into the reasons why freelancers and independent
workers and small businesses go unpaid and one of the issues that I keep
coming back to is the fact that unlike everyone other creditor, almost,
freelancers and independent workers don't have access to top shelf debt
collectors and commercial collection attories, and collecting debts is a huge
pain point for them. Debt collectors and commercial collection attories report
to db, skip trace, and have folks trained to find assets and deadbeats. They
don't work for freelancers and independent workers or small businesses because
they operate on volume and freelancers and independent workers and small
businesses have only a few debt To get freelancer and independent workers
access to top collectors, I've started a company that aggregates their debts
into portfolios and then assigns them to my network of collectors - growing
weekly- who work the accounts. Im really excited about the project because not
only can we get the debt to the right collectors but it turns out that when
all that debt is in one place we can do all sort of near stuff, like figure
out who the deadbeats are who consistently don't pay or pay late and whether
or not the debt can be sold to investors, shifting the risk of non payment
completely off the freelancers. Currently were in beta at www.indepayment.com.
I'm proud to say we're beating the industry average for collections (which is
about 12%) and we're going to be suing our first really bad debtor who we
found owes multiple freelancers money. Without Indepayment each of those
freelancers would have been on their own collecting. Also, we only change when
we collect. check us out and I'm happy to answer any questions.

~~~
matmcf
I like your idea of aggregating a bunch of small debts - that's smart. And
great for the freelancer if it means they get access to a better level of
collection service than they could otherwise afford or find.

Figuring out who the deadbeats are is great too IF you can reach scale (hence
your free service is important) and likewise for calculating a score.

What's your average commission charged to the freelancer and do you find that
many have the ability to oncharge collection costs to their clients?

tx

~~~
indepayment
We're trying hard to reach scale in the next few months. We charge a flat $99
upon collection. I would love if we could charge the debtor the fee but the
first rule of collections is you grab what you can get. Our commercial
collection attornies can tax the costs of the action (court filing fees,
service fees,etc) to the debtor, which then becomes part of the judgment but
most of the time when the freelancers has the option of getting paid before
there is a judgment then those fees tend to get waived.

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matmcf
Hi everyone... this is a side project we've started and keen to get feedback
on.

The hypothesis we're testing is whether there is a bunch of freelancers,
designers, engineers etc... around the world that have 1 or 2 overdue invoices
that they're struggling to get paid, but getting them paid takes time they
don't have and requires an awkward phone call they'd rather not make.

We've tried to make the experience much easier, friendlier and faster than
hiring a traditional credit control person – so you can get that phone call
off your To Do list faster.

Keen to hear your thoughts... would you trust us to make the call on your
behalf? What are your questions / concerns?

Thanks in advance.

Matt Co-founder

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tprophet
\- Not clear on the difference between you and a collection agency. \- Do you
guys report to Dun and Bradstreet? \- What's the difference between the free
and $5 friendly call? \- When you do "the firm" call, that sounds vaguely
Mafia-like. Are you going to threaten to break the guy's kneecaps? Call him
repeatedly at 3 in the morning? I get that vibe from your product name.

Would much prefer to pay for results. And I would want to be able to hear a
recording of the call so I can audit you guys to make sure you're representing
our company in accordance with our values.

~~~
matmcf
Good questions. tx

No we don't report to DnB. We have found that a percentage of invoices get
paid from an email reminder, then another percentage from a follow up phone
call. So you can get a bunch of invoices paid without having to go through the
Debt Collection process.

Good point on differentiating the friendly / firm calls – the difference with
firm phone call is the person we use (she's a bit more clinical in her
approach) plus it also includes a follow up phone call. I agree adding an
example of the phone call would help a great deal in giving you confidence.

Paying for results is something we could explore - maybe no result no pay?
Although our value proposition was more about you not having to take the time
and pain to make the call yourself.

