The payment process needs to be overhauled and automated ASAP
It takes a lot to rile me to the point where I feel I have no choice other than to post on a public forum but I have exhausted other means.
In a little over 24 hrs it will have been one week since a client paid an invoice with funds that had been in escrow for over a month. I say 'paid', but in reality this is an exaggeration because it is still showing as pending.
Messages to customer support have resulted in standard copy and paste messages saying that it can take 'up to 3 days' in exceptional circumstances. Well, those exceptional circumstances have come and gone and we must be in unprecedented territory by now.
Now, I can appreciate that if a client was to pay an invoice, initiating a transaction with new funds not yet on the system, that it might take a little longer, i.e. waiting for the funds to clear, but in this case it had already cleared.
Further messages chasing this up, resulted in a response on Friday assuring that a) it would be cleared today, it hasn't, and b) that there had been more requests than normal, and that there was a backlog.
Now, what is blatantly clear to me, is that the invoice payment process is in part reliant on a manual system and my response to this is that this is, in these days of business, completely and utterly unacceptable.
It is completely ridiculous to imagine that there is a person or persons, whose job it is to check every single invoice? in order to tick a box and allow it to proceed?!?!
Peopleperhour holds funds in escrow routinely, and therefore operates similarly to a bank. It therefore has a responsibility to deliver a service to standards akin to such, and as such, the processing of payments of invoices should not be a manual process, neither in whole or in part.
The same can be said for the withdrawal of funds. It is not uncommon to initiate withdrawal of funds before midday on one day and have to wait for the following day to receive confirmation that this request has even been processed internally, let alone the time that it takes for funds to clear from one account to another. Again this is an unacceptable delay, and responses from customer support have indicated that this is also in part a manual process. This arrangement is unsustainable and cannot continue and Xenios Thrasyvoulou, as the CEO needs to provide assurances that work is being undertaken to improve the situation.
If it helps escalate this to the right people consider this. Part of what Peopleperhour wants is for us as freelancers, to bring in our own private clients and use PPH as a platform through which invoices can be submitted and processed, but if it is going to take a week just for an invoice payment to clear, and then almost another week for a withdrawal to be completed, why should I bring anyone in? Why not just make arrangements for them to pay me direct, or issue an invoice through paypal instead?
Cashflow is absolutely vital to everyone's business and PPH's inefficient processes provide unnecessary stress and delay yet funds stay longer in PPH's account generating interest. Something needs to change and soon.
On a side issue, I can appreciate having a customer service process to filter out the majority of enquiries, but there are times when the hiearachy and senior management of a business need to be contactable, and in the case of peopleperhour, the implementation of their customer service function has established an impenetrable barrier that cannot be breached. How can the business evolve, learn from issues, and develop to improve what it does, and how it does it? And before you say these discussion forums, these are issues that need detailed responses and open discourse with those who are responsible for such decision making.
Lets not forget, that it is the freelancers' work that generates payments, that in turn generates the fees that PPH collects as revenue.
Look after us and we'll continue to use PPH.
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Official comment
Hi Sean,
Many thanks for your message.
Please accept my sincerest apologies, but payments rarely ever take this long to be processed.
I can certainly appreciate your opinion and your position, however we really are developing new systems and processes throughout our platform, and payments is one of the most important ones. I can also tell you that the point you have made is very clear and loud, and I aim to forward your Email to the necessary department heads so that they can get a better understanding of exactly what it is our users need.
The funds are no longer in Escrow, and have been transferred to your PPH wallet.
Please let me know if I can help you with anything else.Comment actions -
"Please accept my sincerest apologies, but payments rarely ever take this long to be processed.", rarely? OMG!! Did you say Rarely?
Every single invoice takes more than 3 days (almost around 10 days), every single one. It rarely processes in less than 3 days. I can assure you that.
If anyone contacts the Support and complains about it, then somehow you go and make exceptions, and then process them quickly.
Recently you guys replied me in the email with some imaginary rules, that doesn't exist in the TOS. And, please don't create a support ticket, this is community support, keep it within community.
I too agree that this is bad for your business. PPH, yes, this is very bad for PPH. -
'Rarely'??
How about every time that fees are held in escrow?
I would have thought that payments would be faster if some or all of the funds are already held by PPH, but no. And, oddly, the larger the amount, the slower it is going through the system - and please don't tell me that larger amounts need more careful scrutiny.
It was, I'm sure, a coincidence that my £700 payment took well over a week to clear through (part escrow, part 'cash') and then took another three days while it was 'pending'....right at the end of the month and - well I never - trickled over into the following month so the full 15% was taken from it.
Obviously, having £250 sitting in escrow for three weeks collecting interest for doing absolutely nothing isn't enough. I wish I could earn it that easily.
Oddly, the small amounts from repeat clients pwhich haven't been in escrow but are just invoiced often get released within minutes of being paid.
Instead of rolling out fancy doodads on the dashboard that nobody wants or needs, it might be an idea if PPH started listening to the people who provide their income. No, that's NOT the buyers - it's the sellers who graft their guts out to earn a living, see a (relatively large) chunk of it taken before they get it and then have to wait forever to get what's left.
We didn't want the new 'standings' thingy by the way - we want an open forum where we can help each other. No, not to gang up on PPH - although that makes no difference anyway - but just somewhere we can truly be a community and discuss things between us. It's been asked for many times but been ignored. PLEASE can you revise your thinking and at least do that much for us?
Thank you
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