Why Indian Freelancers and Small Businesses Still Struggle to Get Paid

The behind-the-scenes look into how I bootstrapped TryGetBill. The reasonably Indian problem that the platform tries to solve for Indian freelancers: clients not paying on time.

That assumption was mostly wrong.

This observation is based on real world experience with invoicing. Customers were not refusing to pay, but when they looked at the invoice they objected.

Three things caused almost every pause:

1. GST breakup that looked like a guess

I have noticed that many of the invoices I have received do not include the GST in the total, or only have a single GST line item without breakdown. For B2B invoices shipped to India, the difference between CGST/SGST and IGST is an important detail. I see many unclear IGST lines that would end up getting sorted later.

2. Descriptions that made clients work

For small one-off jobs, a bill outsourced in paragraph form is perfectly fine. But as your work grows, so does the complexity of your bills. Paragraphs aren’t enough to clearly delineate different work, deliverables, retainers, or packages. Your clients have to spend hours reading each bill to ensure everything is accurate and approved – often adding days to your billing cycle.

3. No single obvious payment action

"Can you resend the payment details?" - I think this must be the most expensive word (of few words) in the freelance vocabulary. I just got pounced on for it myself this morning after sending out a perfectly clean invoice that was ready and willing to be paid but which didn't include explanation of payment details.

So that's what we built first.

Not reporting. Not integrations. Not a mobile app.

If you write invoices, just do the simple maths to make them GST-ready. Ensure that the taxable value is correctly computed and the relevant CGST/SGST or IGST rate is proportionately divided.

Can I get some advice on using Table-style line items to make approval quicker. We do paragraph billing now.

Instantly pay your clients using this feature - create a payment link + public pay page with Razorpay. Share one link and let your clients search for the details and pay instead of providing you with both.

The system is broken not individuals failing to follow through on commitments.

For both unpaid and overdue, I Dashboard-ify my weekly review to turn what would otherwise be a time consuming memory exercise, logging everything and then having to compare numbers, into a 10 minute process to glance over latest figures.

The insight that drove all of it:

Indian payment systems are robust, and payment rails are in place and strong. India’s payment systems enable payment to happen in real time. Clients can pay in seconds using UPI or various other options.

You might think that the bottleneck in your business is caused by your clients not paying on time, not taking enough calls or not producing enough quality work. None of these things are usually the cause of a bottleneck in a creative business and more often than not, it comes down to the invoice.

Correct and chase outstanding invoices on an ongoing basis and process payments as they are received.

The article is incomplete. Please click here to read the full article with relevant data: Delayed payment data of MSMEs, RBI Digital Payment Growth, CBIC issues new Rule for GST Invoice.

👉 Full article on TryGetBill blog -- https://trygetbill.com/blog/why-indian-freelancers-and-small-businesses-still-struggle-to-get-paid

You’re a freelancer or SMB founder in India fighting this same battle? Try it free. I’d love to know if it makes a dent.

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