Parcel & Pine gets paid 16 days sooner

Parcel & Pine is a 12-person branding agency in Portland, Oregon, known for packaging work for food and drink brands. As a small team, they feel every late invoice.

The challenge

The work itself went well. Getting paid for it didn't. Invoices went out as PDF attachments a few days after a project wrapped, by which point the client's attention had moved on. Payment arrived weeks later, often after two or three reminders.

For a small team, every reminder was also a distraction. Someone had to notice the invoice was late, find the right contact, and write an email that was firm without sounding cross. It was nobody's favourite job, so it was often done late, which made payment later still.

Final files had a similar problem. They were sent as transfer links that expired, so six months later a client would ask for the logo files again, and someone would dig through old folders to find the right version.

• Invoices arrived separately from the work they paid for
• Transfer links expired, so final files had to be re-sent
• Every reminder about money felt awkward to write

What they changed

Marcus Bell set up Ferrybox in one afternoon. Each client got a portal with their branding project in it: concepts, revisions, the approved finals and, at the end, the invoice.

The invoice now sits next to the work it pays for. A client approves the final packaging and sees the invoice on the same screen, payable by card or bank transfer through Stripe. Reminders go out from the portal on a schedule, in a tone the team chose themselves.

Setting it up meant deciding a few things the team had never written down: when an invoice goes out, how long clients have to pay, and what the reminders should say. Marcus wrote the reminder text himself, in the same friendly voice the agency uses with clients everywhere else. The first reminder thanks the client for approving the work; the second simply points to the invoice.

Approved files move to the asset library automatically, where they stay for as long as the client needs them. No more expiring links.

Clients needed no training. They opened a link, saw their project and knew what was waiting for them.

The results

Parcel & Pine now gets paid 16 days sooner on average. For a 12-person agency, that's the difference between a comfortable month and a tight one.

Since switching, the team hasn't lost a single final file. When a client asks for last year's logo pack, the answer is a link to the portal – and usually the client has already found it there.

Marcus's advice to other small agencies is simple: put the invoice where the client is already looking.