How would your business change if customers always paid your invoices early?
Try adding real-time early payment discounts into your invoices with us and experience the change first hand.
If you are tired of chasing down invoices, reconciling short-payments or borrowing to bridge the cashflow gap, let's break the cycle and use a new approach.
We help add and administer real-time early payment discounts to your invoices so it's easy to reward customers for paying early and importantly, we remove all the administrative burden for you.
Your customers will want to pay you early because the earlier they pay, the bigger the discount. Conversely, if they pay late, they miss out on the full discount.
For you, this will help reduce the worrying, win more customers and convert sales into cash quickly.
Already offering sales discount? See how a simple repackage of your sales discounts into early payment discounts will help you win more customers, without costing you extra margin.
Want to use our software to administer & drive your current discount program? No problems.
With casual (free) and membership plans starting from just $1.16 a day and backed by our 100% money back guarantee, why not try this new approach?
Start your 30 days free trial now.
Did you know your invoices are competing for attention?
Try offering early payment discounts to jump the queue and make your invoice priority number 1 to get paid.
Step 1.
Decide you want to stand out from the crowd of invoices.
Step 2.
Use our calculator and work out how much discount to offer.
Step 3.
Set your rate and we will make every payment accountable.
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Once you sent your invoice, it sits in a pile of "other invoices" waiting to be paid.
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You are competing for the attention of the payables team.
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Relationships and constant reminders play a major role, but to leap frog the queue, NOTHING beats a financial incentive, like an early payment discount.
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Offering an early payment discount is a great idea, but it has to be easy and financially worthwhile.
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Financially, because you are competing against bank interest rate (1-1.5% p.a.), you want to stretch further to make your early payment discount worthwhile and stand-out.
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What should you offer for early payment? Use this calculator here to work out a starting point.
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After you work out your starting point, make it easy to pay using either "one-time payment" links or setup regular early or on-time payment arrangements.
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Every customer is different so setting 'custom' rates for your customers helps you stand out.
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Lastly, early payment discounts should only be given if the invoice is actually paid early.
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That's why having an in-built direct debit or payment capability is vital not only to make everyone accountable, but also makes Xero bookkeeping & reconciliation a breeze.
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See an example here on how to package your discount without sacrificing your margins.
Repackage your sales discounts
How to use discounts to win more customers, without sacrificing more margins.
Step 1.
Don't give away your discounts until they pay (e.g. 5%).
Step 2.
Work out your true cost of chasing and waiting (e.g. 3.9%) .
Step 3.
Win more customers without giving up more margins (e.g. 6.9%).
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Instead of giving a discount on your service or product, repackage the discount as an early or on-time payment.
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This instantly makes your invoice stand out from the crowd and demands attention.
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For example, the 5% discount you were previously providing now becomes a 5% early payment discount.
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Related blog: Don't discount what you sell
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Use the calculator here to work out the true cost chasing and waiting.
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Let's use 3.9% as an example of your hidden cost of chasing late invoices.
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Now you know your cost, you can decide whether to boost your discount.
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Knowing your numbers gives you the clarity to confidently boost your offer and win more customers.
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You decide to boost your discount from 5% to 6.9% whilst keeping 2% (out of the 3.9%) of the savings up your sleeves.
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Suddenly, your market offering is stronger, without costing you more.
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Your customers are now rewarded for paying early and enjoy discounts higher than a product/service led negotiated discount.
The information which you calculate from this calculator is intended for use by you as a guide only. This simulation, resulting calculations, figures and formulae used within this calculator may change at any time without notice. Parakeet accepts no responsibility for any losses arising from any use of or reliance upon any calculations or conclusions reached using the calculator. This calculation does not take into account fees which may apply to the services provided by Parakeet.
Get rid of short-payment & administration headaches
We help Finance and Accounts teams automate the administrative burden of short payments, saving hours of spreadsheets and follow ups.
Step 1.
We don't need anything new. We will simplify what you do instead.
Step 2.
We reconcile short-payments for you, automatically.
Step 3.
Your job is to perform a simple "Click-n-transfer" process in Xero.
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Create custom Early Payment Discount rules for your customers to reflect existing arrangements.
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Use existing bank accounts to receive payments.
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Use your own online or bank provided merchant facilities, we don't need you to set a new one up to work with us.
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See the list of accepted merchant providers here..
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Because we calculate the early payment discount, surcharges and collect the net invoice payment, we know exactly what each payment consist of.
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This means you will have accurate per invoice reconciliation breaking down the early payment discounts given, surcharge collected and payment received.
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We use a series of clearing accounts, so when it comes to do your bank reconciliation, it is literally a 1 click-n-transfer process to a clearing account.
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See it in action here.
Features focused on getting you paid early
Say bye to static invoices and hello to dynamic invoices with real-time early payment discounting.
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One-Time Payment for non-registered customers.
Your customers do not need to sign up to take advantage of early payment discounts. By using your global discount configuration, your customers will see in real time, the discounts they are eligible to in exchange for paying earlier.
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Direct Debit facility included so you can take online payments straight away.
Your Parakeet account includes an in-built direct debt facility which means you can start collecting online payments straight away. You can also use your existing online merchant facilities (BYO merchant) so your customers can pay you via credit card.
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Custom Incremental or Static Discount for registered customers.
Set up customer specific Discount configuration either on an incremental (i.e. the discount you give reduces every day until the due date) or static basis (i.e. fix discount for the duration of the invoice) to easily manage your customer relationships and boost opportunities for early payments.
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Automate or Manually review early payments.
Parakeet lets you automate the acceptance of discount offer to maximise your opportunities to boost your cashflow or alternatively, manually review all discount offer to access cash as and when needed.
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Reconcile invoices, discounts and surcharge recovery in seconds with "1 click-n-transfer".
Parakeet automates the reconciliation of your invoices, from applying payment to adjusting for early payment discounts (existing or new arrangements) and surcharge recovered. So your only task is to reconcile your bank statement to a Clearing account. It's literally 1 click-n-transfer.
Configuring Parakeet Portal
Learn how to set up Parakeet.
Get Started with Parakeet and Xero
Connect Parakeet to Xero to automate payment collection. Then add a bank account to accept deposits. No more late invoice payments or chasing up customers.
Choose the maximum discount (or reduced price on your invoice) you are willing to offer and we take care of the rest. Create and send invoices from Xero and Parakeet provides a secure link to your customers with your discount offer in exchange for early payment.
Parakeet uses direct debit, credit cards or merchant facilities to collect automatically on or before due dates. You have full visibility of incoming payments and once an invoice is settled, it is automatically ready for reconciliation in your accounting software.
No registration required for your customers
Easy for your customers to accept & pay.
Simple
We don't require your customers to be Parakeet users, making one-time payments a breeze. Regular customers? Register them to access custom Discounts and automate collection.
Collecting payment details is as easy as putting in their direct debit or credit card details. No added hassles or requests.
Thoughtful
No surprises. Customers are always notified by email when a payment is ready or when a recurring payment is automated.
We give your customers the flexibility to pay with their preferred method. Using our merchant facility, we can accept credit card payments on your behalf and deposit straight into the account of your choosing.
Secure
Your customer's payments are fully protected. Parakeet is PCI-DSS Compliant.
Our security protocols across our platform, applications and API integrations have been fully audited and certified by this globally recognised standards.
Frequently asked questions
1. Does you app add early payment discounting to Xero invoices?
Yes.
Once you register & configure your Parakeet portal, we will automatically apply your invoices with the early payment discount rate that you have chosen to use.
2. How does it work?
In 3 steps.
1) Ensure your customers details are updated in Xero (4 fields required - contact name, primary person, email & ABN)
2) Configure your Parakeet account & Connect to Xero
3) Approve your invoices in Xero
From this point onwards, our platform automates the rest.
We update each invoice with the appropriate discount for the day and if your customer chooses to pay early to capture the discount, they can.
Once the invoice is paid, we post the entries back into Xero.
3. How much does Parakeet cost?
It starts from $1.16 a day. All our plans include a 30 days free trial and for small businesses, you can process up to 10 transactions per month for free, every month under our casual plan.
Refer to our latest pricing offers here.
4. Can I use different Discount rate for different customers?
Yes.
To have customise discount rate, your customer needs to be registered as a user in the Parakeet portal.
We find this is really useful for regular clients that you deal with as they receive a customised rate whilst you also know that your customer has set up a Parakeet Wallet, which gives you certainty of payment. They also get the benefit of setting up auto acceptance which means discounts are automatically taken and paid.
For non-registered clients, you can continue to offer them your 'global' discount rate under one-time payment invoices.
5. What's the difference between incremental & static Discounts?
Early Payment Discounts for invoices come in two styles: Incremental and static.
We recommend incremental, which means the amount of discount decrease percentage points each day until the due date.
That said, we give you the ability to select a static discount — a single offer amount for the entirety of the invoice lifecycle to cater for any existing arrangements you have.
6. What happens if my customer doesn't pay early, do they still get a discount?
No.
Our system calculates and updates the discount every day based on your rules.
So if they only pay after the invoice is due, then no discounts will apply and the full invoice amount will be payable.