How to bill it...........??

[Mosh]

One of my best customers have in the last two years made me make a different invoice for EACH SIGN! Normal invoice is $4K--$5K for 40-50 signs. Well each sign is getting paid from a different grant for the place. All part of the game. If you like do their work you eat it. Charge more and there are guys like me that don't do this for the $$ that will swoop the account up. I did hear there is economic problems in other parts of the USA so work is work!!!

Point is do as they want, or guy like me doing it for fun will eat up the work. Been getting jobs that way for the last 25 years! Always someone out there doing it better and cheaper, so ...Really sucks if you have a car paymeny of a house payment to make. Glad I am not in that boat. In fact I am going to be 40 soon and am glad to say I have NEVER had a bank loan in my life. Save your money is the key and don't spent whay you don't have.

 

[visual800]

I dont understand the difference in you having items seperately on one invoice as opposed to write one invoice for each set of items (if Im reading this correctly) they must have hired a freaking ex state employee to do their books. (ya know the, i dont wanna do too much cause it aint my job attitude)

Id tell them you will itemize on one invoice and try and make it easier or you will have to discuss extra charges

 

[Gino]

I think we've boiled it all down.

• Yes, for the most part, we use QuickBooks.
• They want each and every sign priced separately.
• Some signs come into me.
• Some signs come into Jeremey.
• Sometimes, they will drop off their own material at the back door and leave and I never see it, until after it's printed.
• Some signs come in to both of us.
• Some signs are dropped off with a disc.
• Some have no accompanying paper or hard copy.
• Some signs are in formats we can't read.
• Most discs contain more than one job on it and it won't have the various jobs listed on it.
• Many signs have no titles or identifying names.
• Some of their signs come in with no description or any kind of anything.

In other words, they are being lazy in their distribution of these signs to us. They make some sense when delivered, are fabricated alright and they receive what they need product-wise, but when we go to bill and all we have is a piece of paper with a guy pictured on it holding something, which many of these have... we simply call it 2pcs. 38" x 42" diebond, 1-sided flatbed print and in most cases, the itemized price or if there is a group of these, we lump them into one combined price of let's say..... 7 units. However, they want to know exactly what picture was on the sign and how much was that particular sign.

• You see, all of their information has enough on it to fabricate the signs, but not enough to bill it the way they want or need it.

I am not going to do their clerical work for free any longer. On Friday, I designed a Purchase Order form for them and will go to their place next Wednsday or Thursday, instal it for them in ExCell and they will have to give me a PO for each and every sign, along with sizes, description and how many. This way, when I receive this information, I don't care what they name it, how they deliver it, I will just bill by PO and PO alone.

If they can't get their act together, sure I'll miss them, but I'm not going to be out hours and hours of time, unless I'm compesated for it from here on in.

I told them I was waiting for two checks for over three weeks and my answer was... well, we've been racking our brains for three weeks trying to figure out your stoopid invoicing. That's why I'm p!ssed. This has been working fine for 26 years and suddenly in the last two years, it ain't working ?? Whadafug ?? Give me a frickin' break. It doesn't go south suddenly, except, they are L A Z Y !!

I'll let you know the results next week if anyone's interested in, if this works or not.

 

[signage]

Welcome to the new world Gino! It seems everything is going this way (Lazy employees)!

 

[WCSign]

I bet if you mail them a few hundred invoices on the same day (1 for each sign) - Just once will be all it takes for them to forget about all that mess.

Tell them thats pretty much the only way you can itemize everything

 

[Fatboy]

I am not sure if I understand the clients demands correctly.But if it is what I think it is it will be only fair to your client to give them itemized billing.How else would they know how to bill their client?

 

[cdiesel]

I'd be upcharging for the PITA factor WAYYYY before they started asking for invoices like this. Send me files one way, with a clear description of what is needed. When things start coming from all directions, in different forms, not following any sort of protocol, I'd tell 'em to get their stuff together or pound sand.

 

[SD&F]

Gino, I think your plan is good when it comes to going to them with what you need. I think you just need to sit down and talk to them. If it is requiring a lot of work on your end, then bill it accordingly. I find itemizing can be tedious sometimes, but it's what I need to do on my end.

 

[anotherdog]

I agree, you need to sit down with them and find a better way. Otherwise you either fold the extra cost into the job or live with the crazy.

Myself, I would create a new line item called "enhanced Invoicing" and charge an extra couple of cents. They clearly need you to take the chaos out of their production, espcially since they are using your invoices to create the itemized bills they send to their customers.

Customers, Can't live without them, can't slap them.

 

[heyskull]

I think I would talk to the owner and suggest it is going to cost them more money to work this out by employing another person or it you will have to employ another person which will also raise the price.
I am thinking this company has already had to work out what each item is costing them and they have thought .... Why not save us some money by letting the sign guys sort this out as he has already done this.

SC

 

[GAC05]

Outsource your invoicing and billing overseas........

 

[4R Graphics]

Just a thought but I bet there is a college kid somewhere (that for little or no money just something to show in class) that could write you a program that you could upload to a secure section of your website and have them input all the info ie size, print file and substrate (make substrate easy hard, sticky or banner something like that. Then you have all the info you need making it easier on you and with a few clicks you can fill a spreadsheet/QB with the info that they entered and just setup a billing price based on Sqft or Sqin. I know you said that you print in different passes and what not so average them and set the price so some will be higher and some will be lower but you should break out even and if you find it is a low bump it a little until your good.`

Customers are always the problem but they pay the bills.

 

[JR-Folientechnik]

I think you have to then treat each item as a sign on its own and price accordingly while keeping in mind that this is a good and regular customer. You might try establishing a graduated volume discount schedule and a base price for each and every sign that will also cover your extra time in pricing each out individually. This way you cover your extra time and shift the burden of providing high volume orders to the customer in order to get the best overall price.