Overview
Valiant Technology, based in New York City, focuses on providing managed services and cloud-based solutions to their clients in the creative space, including PR and advertising agencies, non-profits and professional service providers. They have designed their services to take care of all their clients’ IT challenges, maintenance and support so their clients can focus on growing their businesses.
Industry: IT Services
Compapny : 10-50 Employees
Challenge
Looking to Streamline Invoice and Payment Processes
Before 2018, Valiant’s billing and payment process was a mixed bag. They had clients who sent checks, and others used credit cards or wired payments. Invoices were created in Valiant’s PSA, Autotask, and they would sync over to QuickBooks Desktop and then to the prior platform they were using.
A client would receive an automated email telling them their invoice was ready, and Valiant would send a full PDF copy of the invoice from QuickBooks as well.
Previous Customer Support Waned Over the Years
We were initially one of the first clients of our previous provider, and their customer support was very responsive. But as they grew the number of clients, their customer support deteriorated. For the last two years we were with them, we couldn’t get them on the phone. Issues we had were placed into a ticketing queue where they stalled for four or five days.
Wanted to Bypass Credit Card Processing Fees
At the start of the pandemic, we noticed that many businesses had either stopped accepting credit cards, or they were beginning to charge their customers 3- 4% for credit card fees.
Solution
Cost Savings and Efficiency
Just like so many other companies, Valiant Technology was looking to save on monthly credit card processing fees and automate invoicing and payments.
Cost Savings in Excess of $120K Year
We achieved cost savings in two ways:
- A flat fee pricing model that makes it easy to predict payments. This makes the most sense for us because it gives us room to grow. There also aren’t any processing or gateway fees like we had with our prior provider that fluctuated every month. We’re saving about 75-80% of our monthly processing fees with Alternative Payments.
- Alternative Payments is collecting the credit card processing fees from our clients, saving us $10K a month or more.
Quick Go Live and Onboarding Experience
Alternative Payments provided us with a team of people that we worked with throughout the implementation phase. We collaborated with the same small team whom we got to know really well, and they provided the necessary handholding that we required in the beginning. We primarily bill our clients on a monthly retainer basis and receive 80% of our ongoing revenue at the beginning of each month. We send these retainer clients their invoices 10 days before the first of the month and it all went well from the first month of going live.
Migration Was Smooth and Easy
I had a lot of fear about moving the client information over to Alternative Payments, thinking that we’d have to have 120-150 clients upload their information into the new system. Thankfully, Alternative Payments was able to migrate all our client data from our old system to their new one without skipping a beat. The fact that this process was seamless and easy helped us out quite a bit. Because I was needlessly worried about this, I held off launching the new system a month longer than I needed to.
Favorite Features That Save Time
Alternative Payments offers two impressive features that I really like:
- Transparent Data
I like to go into the Transaction tab each day and see the transactions that are taking place. I can see when an invoice is due, when payment is made and when it hits our bank all in one line item, for all my customers on one screen – no more flipping through pages to see each one separately.
- Automatic Email Reminders
The level of payment reminders is so much more robust with Alternative Payments. It keeps an ongoing Accounts Receivable and payment dialogue with our clients on a regular basis.
“Alternative Payments’ support is excellent. I get the answers I need within a couple of hours to any request that I send in. It’s fantastic.”
Results
Getting Away from Credit Card Processing Fees
Valiant Technology is pleased that it has moved away from the onerous challenge of collecting credit card processing fees. Now it can keep that money in-house to better support its customers.
- 75% savings in monthly payment processing fees over prior provider
- 100% savings in credit card processing fees
- One-hour email response time for any support request
“As a testament to Alternative Payments, one of our clients reached out to us and asked us to refer them to Alternative Payments, and they have since signed up as well!”
