When your customers aren't paying on time, the first question to ask is: did they even get the invoice?
For Jon Murphy, founder of Salt Silo — a British supplier of high-purity water softening salt to hotels, breweries, and pub chains across the UK — that question had a painful answer. Invoices sent through Xero were regularly bouncing. Customers were claiming they'd never received them. And by the time Salt Silo chased it up, resent the invoice, and waited another 30 days, what started as net-30 terms had quietly stretched to 60 days or longer.
"We were going from 30-day credit terms to 60 days," Jon recalls. "And some of those were even paying late after that."
The culprit was something deceptively simple: the emails were coming from Xero's domain, not Salt Silo's. Spam filters didn't like it. Neither did the cash flow.
Salt Silo supplies premium British-sourced water softening salt to the hospitality industry, public sector organisations, breweries, and pub chains. Operating primarily across the hard-water regions of the UK's east and south coasts, they help hotels and large commercial buildings protect their water softening systems from limescale build-up — improving machine lifespan, water quality, and operational efficiency.
It's a founder-led business, which means Jon wears many hats. And for a long time, that included the role of full-time invoice chaser.
Salt Silo had experienced the domain deliverability problem before — with their previous accounting software, FreshBooks. When they migrated to Xero, hoping for an improvement, the same issue followed them.
"All of the emails were not going to be coming from our domain name — they were all going to be coming from Xero," Jon explains. "We were finding there was a lot of bounces. Emails weren't getting delivered effectively. A lot of customers were saying they just hadn't had the invoices at all."
The knock-on effect was significant. By the time Salt Silo tracked down a non-delivery, resent the invoice directly, and then waited out the payment terms from scratch, the gap between delivery and payment had doubled. For a scaling business managing cash flow carefully, those extra 30 days added up fast.
Jon found Paidnice through the Xero App Store while searching specifically for the deliverability fix. He reached out, spoke to Denym, and got the answer he was looking for.
"Denym said, yep, that's not a problem — we can solve that. And then we saw all the other benefits that came along with that."
The domain deliverability fix was the entry point. What Salt Silo got was a complete accounts receivable automation layer built on top of Xero: automated invoice sends, timed reminders, professional statements, a client portal, and granular policy controls — all flowing from their own domain, under their own brand.
5+ hours of admin saved every month — and growing
For a founder-led business, time is the most valuable resource. Before Paidnice, Jon was manually sending invoices, individually dispatching statements to every customer, and setting individual reminders inside Xero — one by one.
"The biggest impact from using Paidnice has really been man hours for me. Just by using Paidnice, it's freed up loads and loads of time. We're talking five hours already of admin per month — and we're a scaling business. In a year, that could be 15 to 20 hours a month."
Automated reminders that actually work
Salt Silo now runs policies that handle the entire invoice lifecycle without manual intervention. An invoice is created in Xero, Paidnice sends it the same day at the right time, and a pre-set sequence of reminders fires automatically: a heads-up before the due date, a notification on the day, and a follow-up if payment doesn't arrive.
"We just set up a policy at the start, and then that policy determines how the invoices go. One customer gets their delivery on a day, the invoice is sent the same day, and then 30 days later — or maybe five days before — they get a reminder. Your invoice is due soon. On the day: your invoice is now due. A week later: your invoice is overdue."
Statements that reflect the brand
Previously, statements were sent manually and looked like plain Excel exports. Customers had no way to interact with them. Now, Salt Silo's monthly statements go out automatically, are fully branded, and include live links to every invoice.
"When the statement comes through, it looks so professional compared to what we were sending before. With Paidnice, you can click on that invoice, go into it, view it — you can go into the customer portal, view the quotes you've had, make sure the quote matches the invoice. You can see what's overdue, what's outstanding. I just think it's fantastic."
A client portal customers actually use
The client portal was an unexpected bonus. Customers now have a single place to view all their invoices, quotes, and outstanding balances — removing the need to email Salt Silo every time they want to dig up an old document.
"We had a couple of customers reach out saying, can we have access to the old invoices we've had? It's really simple — we just said, wait for your statements in two days and you can click on everything and download it all."
One of the features Jon highlights most is the granular customisation of policies — particularly around timing and customer segmentation.
Salt Silo deals with both hospitality businesses and public sector organisations like Multi-Academy Trusts. When one Trust's IT team flagged that calendar invites attached to invoices were triggering their spam filters, Jon didn't have to choose between functionality and deliverability.
"What was great about Paidnice was that we were able to just turn that function off just for them. We had all the hospitality customers in one group, and then the MATs and independent schools in a completely separate group — almost the same policies, everything exactly the same, other than we just didn't send the calendar."
The control over send times has also made a real difference.
"We can only send invoices and reminders on weekdays — we don't really operate at weekends. An invoice turning up on a Sunday, certainly in our industry, just doesn't work. And we don't like everything to go at the same time. If it's not being seen at 9am on the first invoice and they haven't responded to that reminder, then a second reminder going at 11 o'clock — just having that customisation has been really, really useful."
Jon is candid that the early learning curve was real — but short. A single onboarding call with Denym was enough to unlock the full system.
"Denym just jumped on a call straight away — had like half an hour, explained everything. He could talk us through it, log into Paidnice and show us. That show-and-tell was fantastic, because it enabled us to really understand everything to the finest details. After that, a couple of hours and you feel like an expert on Paidnice."
The proof of value has been organic. Customers comment on how professional the invoicing looks. A close business partner — a water softener installation and servicing company that also runs Xero — has already expressed interest in signing up after seeing Salt Silo's documents.
And Jon has taken it a step further. He's been active in a Xero community forum where users have been struggling with the same domain deliverability issue that originally brought him to Paidnice.
"There are so many people out there that don't even realise Paidnice exists. They're struggling with Xero, wondering why their emails aren't getting delivered. They want to send invoices and statements from their own domain name and they're not seeing the solution. So I just put a comment in there mentioning Paidnice — telling everybody: if that's a problem you've got, it will solve it."
"100% give it a try. It's not an expensive service for the money you'll gain in time management — it probably costs as much as half an hour's pay. It is nothing in comparison to the hours you'll save, the efficiencies it creates. It's an absolute no-brainer. You don't have to make a decision and sign up for something forever — you can just give it a try. And I'm certain that if anybody did give it a try, they would be sold instantly."
Salt Silo is a UK-based distributor of high-purity British water softening salt, serving the hospitality sector, public sector, and commercial water treatment industry.
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