GoDaddy Wants to Help Small Businesses ‘Get Paid’

In an expansion of GoDaddy’s small business services portfolio, the company has launched a new payments management product called Get Paid.

Three plans make up Get Paid, beginning with the $3.99 per month Starter subscription that includes invoicing, payments processing and mobile payments. Get Paid tops out at $14.99 per month for a full-featured Premium version that includes time tracking, expense billing, recurring invoices and more.

All of the plans are designed to help the 28 million small businesses in the U.S. account for every dollar they’re owned, according to Steven Aldrich, senior vice president of applications at GoDaddy. More importantly, Get Paid was designed to get them compensated on time for their hard work.

Addressing Small Business Cash Flow

Instead of a steady stream of income, many small businesses suffer from dry spells, often through no fault of their own. In short, their cash flow often slows to a trickle or stops altogether due to delays in payment.

Aldrich shared an eye-opening statistic gleaned from the company’s own customer base. “For roughly half of small business owners [45 percent], late payments were a major pain point,” he told Small Business Computing.

Worse, some small business owners play it fast and loose with their finances. “A quarter of them lost track of when a customer had paid an invoice,” if they even paid at all, added Aldrich. “Small businesses do a lot of work and don’t always get paid for the work they do.”

To fix this, GoDaddy teamed with PayPal, Dwolla and Stripe for a unified invoicing and payments solution that simplifies accepting funds online or on the go.

“We know that getting paid is always top of mind for our customers,” said Aldrich in prepared remarks. Responding to this demand, his company then “set out to create a best-in-class solution to ensure easy access to all the tools they need to collect payments quickly and efficiently.”

Get Paid is available as “a Web application and a mobile application for iPhone and Android,” said Aldrich. You can create, send and track customizable invoices and accept practically any form of payment, including credit and debit cards, eChecks (ACH) and PayPal.

Flexibility is key to getting paid quickly, said Aldrich. Once a small business’ clients receive the invoice via email, they can settle their accounts quickly online by using PayPal’s payment processing platform, which accepts major credit cards. A mobile card reader from Stripe enables on-site payments.

Another perk is eCheck processing through Dwolla, which helps take the sting out of accepting big payments.

Aldrich explained that the average per-transaction fee for credit card payments is roughly three percent. If a $40,000 a year business only accepts credit cards, for example, they’re missing out on $1,200.

“It’s not insignificant in terms of the profitability of that business,” he added. Dwolla, in turn, charges “just a quarter” to handle eChecks, which places less financial burden on small businesses, particularly those that issue large invoices.

GoDaddy Get Paid does away with the identity crisis that plagues many payment platforms.  Every service tier provides a payments page, complete with a Web address that matches a company’s domain name for a more seamless online payment experience for users.

The Essentials and Premium plans feature expense tracking, letting you bill clients for the costs that you incurred, and you can automatically import expenses from credit cards, bank accounts and PayPal. You can also generate weekly sales and expense summaries to keep an eye on the financial health of your business.

GoDaddy Get Paid is available now.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at InfoStor. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Do you have a comment or question about this article or other small business topics in general? Speak out in the SmallBusinessComputing.com Forums. Join the discussion today!

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