31 changes shipped across 2 codebases over New Year. Yes... I spent New Year's Day working on payments. Some people do fireworks.
Columbus REALTORS® went live a couple of days before Christmas, so this week the focus swung straight back to Handl.
Handl: getting paid, straight from the invoice
Here's the thing that bugs me most about agency cash flow. You do the work, you send the invoice... and then you wait. Four weeks, six, sometimes eight. Agencies don't run big enough margins to be a bank for their clients.
So the big piece this week was online payments. Your client opens the invoice and pays it by card, right there. No "can you send me your bank details again?", no logging into anything.
Around that, a few things that make it work in real life:
- Part payments. The client can pay the full amount or a custom amount, up to what's outstanding.
- Payment plans. Split an invoice into instalments and see how far through the plan the client is.
- Saved cards. A client can keep a card on file, with a per-client auto-pay switch the agency controls.
- PDF on the payment page. The client can download the invoice as a PDF, and it can go out attached to the invoice email too.
- Payment reminders. Reminders before and after the due date, on a schedule the agency sets, so you're not the one writing the awkward follow-up.
- Bank transfer details for clients who'd rather pay that way.
- Clear card fees. The fees are set out up front on the pricing page, so nobody gets a surprise.
This is going to our early adopters over the next couple of weeks. Money is the one area where "mostly works" isn't good enough, so it gets a proper round of testing first.
Also in Handl this week: project setup that walks you through it.
A new project now shows a setup checklist... what's required, what's optional, and a "set up later" for anything that can wait. The steps change with the project type, and the budget and team widgets appear once there's enough set up to make them useful.
- Project categories. Every new project gets a category: web build, branding, marketing campaign, consulting, maintenance and so on.
- Milestones that fit the work. Click Add Milestones and the AI agent opens with your project's context loaded. Because it knows the category, it suggests phases that suit a website build or a branding job, not a generic list.
- Richer project settings. A proper rich text description, more than one category per project, and a Files tab.
→ See how it works: invoice automation · client portal · AI agent → Free: invoice aging and chase tracker → Start a Handl trial
One thing I learned
Don't go all in on one project.
Years ago I built a startup called Kohab and put everything I had into it. No other job, a small income from the business. We went through a Royal Commission, pivoted, then COVID came along and it had to close.
So this time there are several products running at once. Some get picked up quickly, some take longer to build and test, and some have a much longer buying decision behind them. When one needs product work and another needs marketing, I can move the effort to where it's needed.
It suits me too... I'm not a patient person. I'm happier when things are go go go. It might not work for everyone, but it does for me.
Happy New Year.
See you next week.
— Daz
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