# How Salt Silo stopped losing a month to bounced invoices

> Fixing invoice deliverability at the domain level gave Salt Silo its payment terms back, and its founder's hours.

Source: https://www.paidnice.com/success-stories/salt-silo
Publisher: Paidnice
Part of: Paidnice success stories, https://www.paidnice.com/success-stories

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## At a glance

- **Customer**: Salt Silo
- **Industry**: Wholesale
- **Location**: 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- **Accounting platform**: Xero
- **Interviewed**: Jon Murphy, Founder
- **Outcome**: 60-day drift to 30-day terms again
- **Also reported**: Five hours of admin back every month, and climbing.
- **Video**: https://latechaser.wistia.com/medias/p81566rkqg (4:20)

## Paidnice features used

- [Your own email domain](https://www.paidnice.com/email-sms-reminders)
- [Email & SMS reminders](https://www.paidnice.com/email-sms-reminders)
- [Automatic statements](https://www.paidnice.com/automated-customer-statements)
- [Customer portal](https://www.paidnice.com/customer-payment-portal)
- [Customer groups](https://www.paidnice.com/debtor-management-software)

## The policy set

- Same-day invoice send from Salt Silo's domain
- Due and overdue reminder sequence
- Weekday-only, staggered send times
- Monthly branded statements
- Separate hospitality and public sector rules

## The story

[Salt Silo](https://saltsilo.co.uk/), a UK supplier of high-purity water softening salt to hotels, breweries, and pub chains, had a cash flow problem hiding in plain sight: its invoices weren't coming back unpaid, they were never arriving at all.

Sent through [Xero](https://www.paidnice.com/integrations/xero)'s domain rather than Salt Silo's own, they tripped spam filters or vanished before customers ever saw them, quietly stretching 30-day terms into 60-plus. By the time founder Jon Murphy tracked down each non-delivery, resent the invoice, and restarted the clock, he'd lost a month of cash flow and an evening of admin he didn't have.

## The stakes: financing customers by accident

For a scaling, founder-led business, the gap between "invoice sent" and "invoice paid" is the whole game. Salt Silo was effectively financing its customers for an extra 30 days without meaning to, and some accounts were still paying late on top of that.

> *"We were going from 30-day credit terms to 60 days. And some of those were even paying late after that."*

The cost wasn't only cash. As founder, Jon wore every hat, and one of them had quietly become full-time invoice follow-up: sending invoices by hand, dispatching statements one customer at a time, setting individual reminders inside Xero. Every undelivered invoice was another item on a list that kept growing as the business did.

## The diagnosis: a delivery problem wearing a payments costume

On the surface, this looked like a payments problem. Customers weren't paying on time, so the instinct was to follow up harder. But the follow-up wasn't the issue, and neither were the customers. The real problem was deliverability.

> *"All of the emails were not going to be coming from our domain name, they were all going to be coming from Xero. 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."*

This wasn't new, either. Salt Silo had hit the same wall with their previous accounting software, FreshBooks, and assumed migrating to Xero would fix it. It didn't, because the root cause followed them: invoices sent from a third-party domain look, to a spam filter, like something other than the business the customer actually deals with. No amount of following up fixes an email that never landed.

> **Why the custom domain mattered**
>
> Accounting platforms send enormous volumes of invoices, and fake-invoice spam is common enough that many IT teams and mail providers block or filter the platforms' shared sending addresses and IP ranges outright. Add stricter recipient email policies on top, and an invoice sent from a third-party domain can vanish before anyone sees it. Sending every invoice, reminder, and statement from Salt Silo's own domain put them back in the inbox, and everything else Paidnice does became possible from there.
>
> Set it up yourself: [send Xero invoices from your own domain](https://www.paidnice.com/blog/send-invoices-from-your-domain-xero) · [stop Xero invoices going to spam](https://www.paidnice.com/blog/how-to-stop-xero-invoices-going-to-spam)

## The shift: fix the inbox, not the follow-up

The realization was that Salt Silo didn't have a credit-control discipline problem, it had an infrastructure problem. The fix wasn't to follow up more often. It was to make sure every invoice, reminder, and statement came from Salt Silo's own domain, under Salt Silo's own brand, so it reached the inbox in the first place.

Jon found Paidnice in the Xero App Store while searching specifically for that deliverability fix, reached out, and spoke to Denym.

> *"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 fix was the entry point. What it opened up was a complete [accounts receivable automation](https://www.paidnice.com/ar-automation) layer sitting on top of Xero, with no migration required: automated sends, timed reminders, branded statements, a customer portal, and policy controls fine enough to handle very different types of customer.

## The implementation: set the policy once, let it run

Getting started came down to one onboarding call. Jon is candid that there was a learning curve, but a short one.

> *"Denym just jumped on a call straight away, had like half an hour, explained everything. 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 core of the setup was policy, not manual work. Once the policy is set, every invoice runs the same gauntlet on its own:

1. **Invoice raised in Xero**: Paidnice sends it the same day, from Salt Silo's own domain, so it lands in the inbox instead of the spam folder.
2. **Friendly reminder before the due date**: A heads-up by [email and SMS](https://www.paidnice.com/email-sms-reminders) that the invoice is coming due.
3. **Notification on the day**: Payment is now due.
4. **Follow-up after the due date**: If payment hasn't arrived, the chase starts without anyone lifting a finger.
5. **Weekday-only, staggered timing**: First touch at 9am, the next at 11 o'clock, never at a weekend. An invoice turning up on a Sunday doesn't work in Salt Silo's industry.
6. **Monthly branded statements**: Fully branded, with live links to every invoice, replacing manual Excel exports.
7. **Customer portal**: Clients pull their own quotes, invoices, and balances without emailing Salt Silo to dig them out.

The detail that mattered most was control. Salt Silo sells to two very different worlds, and they don't behave the same way, so each gets its own policy:

- **Hospitality**: Hotels, breweries, and pub chains, grouped under one policy.
- **Public sector**: Multi-Academy Trusts and independent schools, grouped separately, with their own rules.

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 losing the feature for everyone or losing deliverability for the Trust.

> *"We were able to just turn that function off just for them. Almost the same policies, everything exactly the same, other than we just didn't send the calendar."*

Send timing got the same treatment: weekdays only, staggered through the day rather than all at once.

> *"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. If it's not being seen at 9am on the first invoice and they haven't responded, then a second reminder going at 11 o'clock, just having that customisation has been really, really useful."*

Statements moved from manual Excel exports to [automated, fully branded statements](https://www.paidnice.com/automated-customer-statements) with live links to every invoice, backed by a [customer portal](https://www.paidnice.com/customer-payment-portal) where clients can pull their own quotes, invoices, and balances without emailing Salt Silo to dig them out.

## The results

For a founder-led business, hours are the scarcest resource, and they were the first thing Paidnice gave back. The rest followed from fixing delivery at the source.

| | Before Paidnice | After Paidnice |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Deliverability** | Invoices never arrived. Sent from a third-party domain, they bounced or landed in spam filters. | Straight to the inbox. Every invoice, reminder, and statement sends from Salt Silo's own domain. |
| **Payment terms** | 30 days drifting to 60+. Salt Silo was financing its customers for an extra month without meaning to. | 30-day terms hold. Invoices land the day they are raised, so the slide never starts. |
| **Admin** | Founder-run follow-up. Manual sends, statements one customer at a time, reminders set inside Xero. | 5 hours back a month. "In a year, that could be 15 to 20 hours a month." |

> *"When the statement comes through, it looks so professional compared to what we were sending before. You can see what's overdue, what's outstanding. I just think it's fantastic."*

## The verdict

**"It's an absolute no-brainer. It probably costs as much as half an hour's pay, it is nothing in comparison to the hours you'll save."**

Jon's recommendation is unqualified, and framed in the terms that matter to a fellow business owner: time versus cost.

> *"100% give it a try. 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."*

The proof has shown up organically. Customers comment on how professional the invoicing looks, and a close business partner, a water softener installation company also running Xero, has expressed interest after seeing Salt Silo's documents. Jon has gone a step further, answering people in a Xero community forum who are stuck on the exact deliverability problem that first 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. So I just put a comment in there mentioning Paidnice, telling everybody: if that's a problem you've got, it will solve it."*

*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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Full version with video: https://www.paidnice.com/success-stories/salt-silo
All success stories: https://www.paidnice.com/success-stories