User story - Don Bailey & Son
"Immediate improvement in payment collection and significant reduction in BACS payments, debtor days have already been cut in half despite having only very recently implemented Crezco."
Andrew
Director, Don Bailey & Son
Company intro
Don Bailey and Son specialises in the repair and maintenance of domestic appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers, tumble dryers, electric ovens and vacuum cleaners. It's a family-run company and they have been in this line of business for the past 50 years. Their team is adept at carrying out repairs for all makes and models. The most important thing to them as a business is to make their customers feel comfortable in making them their first port of call for any appliance repairs.
Key benefits
- Immediate improvement in payment collection
- Significant reduction in BACS payments and associated errors
- Debtor days halved
Challenge
Collecting payments is a pain point for many businesses and the friction surrounding payments can be any number of factors including late payments, incorrect amounts/references for bank transfers or manual reconciliation, to name a few. Like most businesses, cashflow is vital for Don Bailey & Son and they needed a simple solution for their customers to pay them faster and often on-the-go.
“As a mobile business delivering services on-site at client premises, our biggest challenge was having a ‘virtual office’ and being able to work on-the-go. A significant issue we had before using Crezco was being able to easily accept payment from our clients, which naturally resulted in some payments mistakes and delays.”
The company still take cash and cheques but their preferred payment method is Crezco. The ease of payment for their customers and the removed admin burden when managing their accounts with automatic reconciliation through the Xero integration has freed up more time for other business activities.
“We do of course still receive a number of cash and cheque payments from certain customer types but these seem to be decreasing and we have a process within Xero for marking these off. Crezco’s Xero integration makes our lives much easier and we’re glad to be increasing that level of automation within the company.”
Solution
Don Bailey & Son chose Crezco because of its account-to-account payment solution. With Crezco, they can send invoices with an embedded "Pay now" button directly from Xero, providing an instant checkout solution to their clients. Thanks to our integration, payments are automatically reconciled in Xero, saving them time and removing risk of error.
“We improved our processes by using Xero for raising sales invoices on-the-go via the Xero mobile app which improved our processes significantly. The issue of payment collection remained though, as although we included our BACS details many took a significant amount of time to pay as it required time and effort, the Crezco “Pay now” button removes this roadblock.”
With Crezco, the invoice reference is automatically set, as well as the payment details. Everything is done to facilitate and secure payments by removing manual errors. Where customers were paying by BACS, inherently no reference was being added to the payment, which resulted in difficulty managing our outstanding invoices in the background.
Crezco leverages open banking to provide free and secure account-to-account payments. Don Bailey & Son customers don’t need to share their card or bank account details, nor manually enter information that could lead to a payment being made to the wrong recipient. With Crezco, their customers are securely redirected to their bank account to authorise the payment via strong customer authentication.
“Introducing Crezco as a payment option on our invoice has led to clients paying almost immediately and as it matches the paid invoice within Xero, which has significantly improved our reconciling time.”
Results
Don Bailey & Son now collect payments online with no fees and instantly, significantly reducing their debtor days and improving their cash flow management. Their customers are also very happy to have a convenient and easy way to pay. Using Crezco is a big plus, it simplifies and secures the payment process for both parties.
1. Immediate improvement in payment collection
2. Significant reduction in BACS payments and associated errors
3. Debtor days halved
Next steps
Don Bailey & Son will continue to grow and to serve their growing customer base and keep using Crezco for their payments.
“We will continue to monitor the payment methods we’re currently using and we’d like to look into removing BACS as a payment option in the future.”
