Returned receipts are a product problem, not a client problem

For months I blamed the people whose receipts bounced.

Then a clothing distributor asked us for a website, and I started blaming myself.

Several of our clients pay us by direct debit. Hosting, maintenance, the recurring fees. And like every business that charges that way, some receipts come back. Around the turn of the year, two came back for insufficient funds. In July, another one came back because the client's bank thought it was a duplicate charge.

The fix is always manual. Someone notices, writes an email, sends a card payment link or our bank details, waits, checks, follows up.

It works. The way a bucket under a leaking roof works.

A showroom nobody has to visit

In mid-August a distributor of clothing brands asked us for something simple. A B2B website where their shop customers could log in and order from the next collection without coming to the showroom. No payment at checkout. The orders would be invoiced when the goods were shipped.

Two days later I sent our proposal. Shops register, but only get in once the client approves them. Products with sizes and colours. Stock that goes down with each order. Prices that can change depending on the customer.

We met by video. Yeray sent the link with a note that in our office we didn't have a camera, so microphone only was fine.

Reading it back makes me smile. Two people building tools for other businesses, with no webcam. The cobbler's children, and all that.

But the request stayed with me. I think it's the same story as our receipts. A business that sells perfectly well, and loses time on everything around the sale, from taking the orders to collecting for them.

People, or process?

Until then, when one of our receipts came back, I thought of it as a customer problem. Unreliable payers. Bad luck. Something to manage, not something to design.

I was wrong. When the same thing fails in the same way again and again, it isn't a people problem. It's a process problem. And a process is something you can build.

When the same payment keeps failing, stop chasing the customer and fix the process.

I don't think most people who fail to pay are avoiding you. A returned receipt should turn into a link the customer can pay in a minute, without calling anyone. A clear, friendly reminder at the right time should sort most cases before they get awkward. And the owner shouldn't have to log into the bank to find out who paid.

Right now, at our place, every one of those steps needs a person.

For a small studio, a club or a distributor, time lost on orders and collections is time not spent with their own customers. When the same kind of admin shows up in our own billing and in a client's request in the same season, I pay attention.

We started Foxnice with 300 € and no investors. Our services pay for our time, and our time is what we'll use to build our own products. I believe the best product ideas don't come from brainstorms. They come from doing the same annoying task again and again until you can't stand it.

I'm not building anything yet. But I've started writing the steps down.

I used to think returned receipts were about customers who don't pay.

Now I think they're about a missing piece of software.

P.S. A studio that pitches software without a webcam. If you wanted proof we don't burn investors' money, there it is.