OB10 invoicing?

[Mr Tea]

One of the larger customers of ours has been in touch to say that they are moving away from paper invoicing to electronic invoicing in order to save the world and that, if we are to continue to supply to them, we will have to pay to register with - and then for each invoice submitted to - OB10 Limited, who will then forward them on our client.

Anyone else had any experience of this, we're loathe to pay the (relatively) trivial amount to join this scheme - should we just charge the client extra until we have recouped our costs?

Thanks

[plasticpig]

Plenty of ways to get around it if you dont want to do it. The easiest is to tell them that for security reasons you financial system is not capable of exporting any data to a third party system and the only format in which you are capable of supplying an invoice electronicly is a pdf file.

[Simpo Two]

Cynical me says they've been stitched up by a clever salesman.

PDF sounds pefectly good to me.

[mmm-five]

Simpo Two said:

Cynical me says they've been stitched up by a clever salesman.

Definitely.

Something along the lines of "We'll put in this all-singing, all-dancing system for free. We'll simply charge your suppliers for invoicing to cover any ongoing costs". If it's pennies then you absorb it, if it's not then it gets factored into the price for the work/product.

I wonder what'll happen when they don't meet the minimum contracted levels of invoices (obviously hidden in the small print)?

[plasticpig]

mmm-five said:

Simpo Two said:

Cynical me says they've been stitched up by a clever salesman.

Definitely.

Something along the lines of "We'll put in this all-singing, all-dancing system for free. We'll simply charge your suppliers for invoicing to cover any ongoing costs". If it's pennies then you absorb it, if it's not then it gets factored into the price for the work/product.

I wonder what'll happen when they don't meet the minimum contracted levels of invoices (obviously hidden in the small print)?

To be fair it's the sort of system large corporates will use who have hundreds of suppliers. Companies like Ford, BT etc have such large buying power they can force their suppliers to comply.

If you don't want to comply then the thing to do is be as cooperative as possible but tell them you use a bespoke financial system that has no export capabilities and the developer wants £20k (or some other random enourmous number) to add the necessary export features in or alternativley supply and export format that no sane individual would think up and see if the supplier is willing to fill the trough of their solution provider.

[johnfm]

Most important thing to check is payment terms - keep an eye on this as we had a rubbish OB10 experience, adn the latest request for OB10 invoicing came with 60 or 90 day terms.

Dear GSK - fkk off and pay us in 30 days.

[mmm-five]

johnfm said:

Most important thing to check is payment terms - keep an eye on this as we had a rubbish OB10 experience, adn the latest request for OB10 invoicing came with 60 or 90 day terms.

Dear GSK - fkk off and pay us in 30 days.

I always got paid by them within 7 days of my invoice. Although my invoices were relatively small and done on a monthly basis through their Fieldglass/Insite system.

[Big_Dan]

As a supplier, you'll be hounded to death until the process is up and running. Expect phone calls at least once an hour!

[geoffd]

I wrote an interface to OB10 for one of my customers. They claimed to be able to accept any file format, which wasn't quite the case. If your finance package can export EDI invoice files, that would be a good start.

I don't see why you shouldn't charge your customer for the setup costs, this will save them money in terms of admin.

Geoff

[Simpo Two]

geoffd said:

I don't see why you shouldn't charge your customer for the setup costs, this will save them money in terms of admin.

Good point. Each time I raise an invoice I'll add 'Cost of making invoice: £10'.