Web hosting giant GoDaddy Inc. has introduced another tool aimed at transforming the company into a one-stop-shop for small businesses. The company today unveiled its Get Paid feature, a tool to eliminate a major pain point for small businesses.
That pain point is getting paid on time, said Steven Aldrich, GoDaddy Senior Vice President of Applications.
In a recent phone interview with Small Business Trends, Aldrich explained:
“The background of this new product goes back to who we serve as customers.”
Get Paid allows companies to display a digital invoice for a customer on a mobile device or email it to them. Customers can then pay instantly using a wide variety of digital payment options.
Aldrich says the tool was built mainly for service businesses, which he says make up roughly 80 percent of small companies in the United States.
Of those businesses, a quarter claim their greatest problem is losing track of whether customers have paid them for all past services or not, according to GoDaddy research.
Instead of sending out Excel invoices electronically or via email where businesses can easily loose track of whether they have been paid or not, Aldrich says Get Paid provides a simpler approach.
Not only does the system allow businesses to use a single format of electronic invoice which is easy to track. Payments can be taken using a PayPal Here reader or just the camera on a smartphone used to scan in credit cards. Or customers can pay online using options like PayPal, Dwolla or Stripe.
Aldrich says the benefit of Get Paid lies in the number of options small businesses have for taking payments:
“It’s really a huge value for these small businesses to have all these services that help them get paid but at the same time help them stay on top of their business.”
Get Paid Comes in Three Tiers:
For $3.99 a month, businesses get the basic service including the ability to send invoices; take payment via mobile phone, laptop or tablet, and accept a variety of payment options as well. The service also comes with a payment page matching your existing domain name — assuming you already have one hosted on GoDaddy.
For $7.99 per month, added services include the ability to bill expenses back to clients; import expenses from credit cards, bank accounts or PayPal and receive weekly sales and expense summaries via email.
A $14.99 version adds the ability to create recurring invoices for clients billed regularly and to track billable and non-billable hours.
GoDaddy has been in the news regularly of late with a plan to go public filed last month.
The company has been on a buying spree since July of 2012 acquiring cloud-based financial management system Outright that year, and since then platforms like Locu, Ronin and Get Found.
Images: GoDaddy
Aira Bongco
That’s great. But how is this different from sending a simple invoice from PayPal? And I have to pay to be able to send fancy invoices when I can send a basic invoice inside PayPal? Tell me what I’m missing here.
Hi Aria—Thanks for the question. I run product management for Get Paid, so I hope I can answer. Using Get Paid to charge customers is a pretty different experience from simply invoicing a customer via PayPal for a number of reasons. Get Paid is a one stop shop for service-based small businesses as it allows them to provide multiple options for their clients, including processing credit cards and eChecks through payment processing solutions from Dwolla and Stripe or with PayPal Here through a customer’s PayPal account. And, in addition to creating and sending invoices from their mobile device or web app, Get Paid users can create invoices, track and billable or non-billable expenses to clients, track billable and non-billable hours, automatically import credit card expenses, set up recurring invoices and receive a weekly sales and expense summary. The tool will link the payments page and web address to match the business’s domain name and also lets users know whether or not a customer has opened the initial invoice email. Our goal is to make life easy for small businesses and their customers by allowing them to get paid on the go and from any device. Thanks again for the question.
Tim Deneen
I need to get paid now