Hello! Sometimes we have clients who are behind on payments and we want to pause services. Has anyone used the property availability to make it not available to schedule? For example, maybe you make the property only available to schedule on Sundays when we aren’t typically working? Just looking for some ideas to make this process smoother/more robust. Thank you!
Or ideas on how to make sure clients pay on time! : )
Question
Pause Services for Late Payments
+15
+13We will simply cancel or uncancel the opportunity services if a payment isn’t received. We also require autopay now which has been a game changer for our AR processes. Card on file, no exceptions.
Sometimes the card bounces and we’ll chace it down for the client to update their payment info accordingly.
+15I guess we’re holding out hope and don’t want to cancel everything quote yet because it can be a pain to reschedule it all. For the autopay, is that through the portal? Are you mostly residential? Thank you so much for the info!
+13Our maintenance routes are primarily residential, but we’ve also seen success setting the expectation early for our commercial properties as well. Our service schedules are pretty simple too. My experience has been that when you “uncancel” future services they revert to previously scheduled times. May want to fact check me on that though.
Yes! The client can add a payment method in the portal, and for those who technically struggle we will accomdate over the phone.
We’re primarily residential. For maintenance clients, we require a credit card on file and automatically charge their monthly maintenance invoice on the first of each month. The exception is clients who prepay the full year by check in exchange for a discount.
It’s rare that we need to suspend service, but when we do, we add [DNS] (“Do Not Service”) as a prefix to both the property name and its abbreviation so the entire team has a clear visual flag. After professionally notifying the client that service is being suspended for nonpayment, we remove upcoming services from the schedule as they arise.
We generally allow a reasonable grace period because we expect most clients will ultimately pay, but our payment process minimizes the exposure.
Another strategy that has worked well for us is collecting 25% of the annual maintenance contract amount in the first month. That keeps cash collected ahead of services rendered for a longer period and gives us more runway if a client becomes delinquent.
Hope that helps!
+25We put a $ before the Property Name Abbreviation. On per-service lawn treatments we will do one treatment with a balnce due. Second treatment the tech will knock on the door if they see the $ and ask for updated contact information. Can be uncomfortable for the technicians at first. YMMV
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