Tracking net terms in a spreadsheet vs Terms Due
Most wholesale businesses start with a spreadsheet of who owes what. It works until it does not. Here is where it breaks.
Spreadsheet vs app
| Spreadsheet | Terms Due | |
|---|---|---|
| Up to date | When someone updates it | Live from Shopify |
| Stops over-limit orders | No | Yes, at checkout |
| Sends reminders | No, someone has to | Yes, email and text on a schedule |
| Collects payment | No | From saved cards on the due date |
| Aging buckets | With formulas that break | Built in |
| Statements | Built by hand, per buyer | Sent on the first of the month |
| History of what was sent | If someone wrote it down | On every invoice timeline |
| Cost | Free, plus staff time | Free up to 3 accounts, then from $49 a month |
Why the spreadsheet works at first
With ten accounts and a monthly payment run, a spreadsheet is fine. One person exports the orders, marks what has been paid, sorts by due date and sends a few emails. It takes an hour and it is done.
The problem is not the spreadsheet. It is that the spreadsheet cannot do anything. It cannot stop an order, send a text or notice that an account has crossed a line. Every action still depends on a person doing it, on the right day, every week.
Signs you have outgrown the spreadsheet
- You found out an account was overdue when they placed another order.
- Chasing invoices takes more than an hour a week.
- Two people keep separate versions of who has paid.
- You cannot say, today, how much of your trade book is more than 30 days late.
- The person who keeps the sheet went on holiday and nobody chased anything.
- A buyer asked for a statement and it took an afternoon to produce.
- You have a column called 'chased?' with dates in some rows.
- A payment marked in Shopify was missed on the sheet and the buyer got chased for it.
Worked example
The week the sheet was not updated
A beauty wholesaler's office manager keeps the sheet and chases every Friday. She is off for two weeks in August. Nobody updates the sheet or sends reminders. In that fortnight eleven invoices fall due, four go overdue, and one salon that was already 20 days late places two more orders because nothing stopped it. When she returns, the sheet is three weeks stale and the first job is working out what happened.
With Terms Due, the same fortnight runs itself: eleven heads-ups, eleven due-today texts, four overdue notices and one hold, with the salon's second order stopped at checkout. The office manager comes back to a Monday email that says so.
What each one costs
Spreadsheet
- An hour a week to update, at least.
- Ten minutes per late invoice to chase, every week it stays late.
- The orders that went through to accounts that should have been held.
- The invoices nobody chased while the sheet owner was away.
- Free, in the sense that nothing appears on a bank statement.
Terms Due
- Free for up to three accounts, then from $49 a month on your Shopify invoice.
- Nothing to update: it reads Shopify.
- Reminders, holds and collection happen on schedule.
- An aging report you did not have to build.
- Someone still decides on limits and makes the day-30 phone calls.
Moving across
There is nothing to import. Terms Due reads your companies, terms and open orders from Shopify when you install it, so the aging report is populated within minutes. Set the limits you had in the sheet on each company, turn on the reminder schedule, and keep the sheet for a month if it makes you comfortable. Most merchants stop opening it by week three.
Questions
Can I export from Terms Due back to a spreadsheet?
Yes. The aging report exports to CSV with one row per invoice.
What if I like my spreadsheet?
Keep it for analysis. Let the app do the part a spreadsheet cannot: stopping orders, sending reminders and collecting.
Does Terms Due need my spreadsheet to get started?
No. Everything comes from Shopify. The only thing you type in is the credit limit for each company, if you want something other than the default.
Is a spreadsheet enough for five trade accounts?
Often, yes. The app earns its keep when there are more accounts than one person can watch, or when the first bad debt has already happened.
Related
Aging report
A live accounts receivable aging report for Shopify B2B: every open invoice in current, 1-30, 31-60, 61-90 and 90+ day buckets, by buyer, with CSV export.
Read moreReading an aging report
What an accounts receivable aging report is, how the aging buckets work, how to read it and what to do about each bucket, with a worked example.
Read morePricing
Terms Due pricing: free for up to three trade accounts, then Starter $49, Growth $99 and Scale $199 a month with a 14-day trial, billed through Shopify.
Read moreStop chasing wholesale invoices by hand
Install Terms Due, set a credit limit for each buyer and let the app hold, remind and collect.
Install on Shopify