Excedr

ACH Pull squashes payment admin for customers

Excedr is a scientific equipment leasing company that arms founders and researchers with the tools they need to bring game-changing diagnostics and therapeutics to humanity, faster.

Co-founder and CEO, Jon Chee, is himself a classically trained biochemist from UC Berkeley: “Excedr solves a pain point I knew well: the struggle of procuring and maintaining essential equipment that could cost half a million bucks a pop.”

This deep understanding of customers’ challenges underpins Excedr’s founder-friendly philosophy. “We’re always working to create more value that allows scientific entrepreneurs to do what they do best,” said Jon. “That extends to how they do business with us. Our clients are busy folks – they don’t want to be manually paying bills or mailing out checks.”

That’s why Excedr uses ACH Pull from GoCardless to automate monthly lease payments from their clients.

Less manual payments, more getting on with business

Excedr used to take customer payments via ACH Push or check. Unfortunately, these methods created extra labor for clients and Excedr that diverted energy from working in the lab or better serving customers.

“Manually pushing monthly recurring ACH payments creates unwelcome admin at both ends,” said Jon. “And with checks, we would literally have to run them to the bank every month.”

After experiencing automated ACH Pull payments from GoCardless when paying one of their own vendors, Excedr decided to try it for itself. Today, 100% of customers pay using ACH Pull and it is the only payment option Excedr offers.

Like superpowers for the finance team

The impact has been remarkable, amplifying the capacity of the Excedr Finance team while saving the company significant time and money.

“With no need to monitor and chase payments, GoCardless lets a team of three do the work of a team of ten – it’s like giving the accounts receivable team superpowers,” Jon said. “Keeping a lean and nimble team also provides major time and money savings, enabling us to scale and better serve clients, versus just drowning in admin.”

Automated ACH Pull payments have also increased cash flow visibility and reliability, while improving the overall customer experience. 

“ACH Pull has ensured that the revenue we expect actually materializes,” said Sylvia Marton, Director of Strategic Partnerships & Sales.

Customers prefer ACH Pull

Jon reports that customer feedback has been great, with many also grateful for the time savings.

“It saves clients' finance departments the headache of manually pushing payments, freeing them to focus on critical, strategic finance work,” he said. “They often actively ask for ACH Pull because paying us becomes one less thing on their plate – frankly, they would rather not be doing ACH pushes.”

And for any customers that may have reservations, customers are protected by the ACH rules. “If anything ever did go wrong with their payment – and nothing ever has – there would be an immediate correction to reconcile and resolve it,” said Jon. “That provides a lot of assurance to hesitant clients.”

Up and running in six weeks

Onboarding GoCardless was quick and pain-free, and Excedr was collecting ACH Pull payments within weeks. “From when we signed up with GoCardless to when we were actually getting folks onto the platform to make payments was about a month to six weeks, so pretty quick,” said Sylvia.

Jon added that the sandbox capability, which allows users to test the full GoCardless platform, provided him with a great deal of peace of mind: “I’m always anxious when rolling something out to a bunch of clients, but the sandbox allows us to confidently work through things.”

“The GoCardless team has also helped us as we build our payments strategy - this includes our international expansion and better understanding payment mechanisms, policies, and security measures in other countries. GoCardless plugs into multiple international payment schemes and has really broadened our horizons,” Jon continued. 

Excedr plans to launch in Canada next and Europe after. Those are locations GoCardless already covers, so all they'll need to do is flick a switch to get up and running, enjoying the same benefits of ACH Pull in their new market.

Where have you been all my life?

The only regret Jon has is that he wishes he’d known about GoCardless earlier.

“If I’d been able to advise a younger Jon to get paid with GoCardless earlier, he may have had a lot more time to focus on strategic matters rather than admin,” he said. “But I'm glad we found GoCardless when we did.”