Stripe, you are loved by developers, but you can do SO much more for us when we pay with Stripe.
There is ONE simple feature you can add to your service, and that is to allow me to specify an email address where to collect invoices.
If they could just add a section: "Send this and all future invoices to: <email>" on their receipts page, then this would be solved.
Let me explain.
Receipt management is something that I absolutely hate as an entrepreneur. The entire internet runs on credit cards.
I have three businesses – each of them uses 20-30 SaaS/Hosting/Marketing services. Each of connected to a credit card and 80% serviced by Stripe.
For each charge, I need to get the receipt every month for my accountant.
This usually involves:
- Logging in with 2FA,
- Finding the billing section (can be hard and never standard)
- Finding the invoice
- Downloading it
- Sending it to my accounting email
This is mind-numbing work. I spend hours every month on this shit. (And no, I can't even outsource this work as it's usually behind 2FA)
Take OpenAI as an example. They don't send receipts through email. They use Stripe. Every month, I have to go through the steps described above to get their receipt (x3 times).
Some services make this easy and at least let you specify an email where receipts are sent.
Let's math it out:
- According to ChatGPT, "A defensible range is 580–600 million people globally starting or running a business."
- Let's say only 1% of these are entrepreneurs who are similar to me.
- I spend about 2 hours per month on hunting down receipts.
- 80% is through Stripe.
- Let's say an hour is worth 50USD
So with a simple feature, Stripe can generate 5.6 billion USD in savings. (low estimate).
Do you feel the same? Comment and help me make this into a movement.
Do you have a service where you can specify "invoice email"? Shame on you! Report back when you have fixed it.
Do you know any product managers at Stripe who can make this happen?
Posted by bosmanez