We are a small but growing shop. Our standing policy is to get a 50% deposit on all jobs over $100. We recently got contacted by a large nyc non profit that takes 45 days (!) to process payment, and lost the job due to our policy. We are having a bit of an internal debate about how to handle this in the future. We would like to do bigger work for bigger clients, but are a bit nervous to print and deliver a job with no guarantee that we'll ever get paid. Im sure you all have plenty of experience and advice to offer, and it will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
In my opinion - you did the right thing. You can make custom adjustments to you policy to the customer with established business relationship. Hello, I need to print something isn't that... To the best of my knowledge - it is not a common practice for printshops to giveaway net 30 etc at the point of "hello", besides they can describe themselves as large and promising client all they want, if they do not want to "step in your shoes" and understand / respect / accept that 50% down is reasonable request - I don't think you lost much. I am sure You accept CC =, they could swipe and pay it off Net 100 or whatever. Wonder how did they bought their cars, computers, how are they running gala parties, hence, if they buy candies / fruits to put in a basket in a conference room etc.? Pay for everything in 45 days? I would out that! In my shop I have a sign " Due to our agreement with local banks we do not issue lines of credit and they do no sell printing products"
Another thought - depending on the order size, if it is a $5000 order or more it is a reason to think twice. But if it is a new promising customer and want couple of business cards orders some postcards - $100-200 worth, sometime we would agree to pay later just to see what the customer is made out of. But honestly we do not have any 30 day customers, if not COD or 50% now and balance when ready we have customers that write check once a week or something in that nature.Printing is something where you did carry all of your expenses at the point that order is ready, if client wants to stretch the payments, that is what CC are for. When we sell service contracts for copiers - it that business, yes, I can allow 3-6 month even 12 to pay the invoice because we do not carry all expenses in a few days period.... You should not feel bad. There are huge printing providers with army of accountants, own collection departments and most likely attorneys, may be not in-house but on speed dial, they may-be can offer 30-40 days NEts but not smaller guys...
