Collections is something all landscaping businesses have to deal with. If you are having trouble getting paid for services rendered and your accounts receivable is working overtime, it’s time to change up your processes. Getting paid on time is crucial for operating a healthy business.
Here are five strategies that will help keep collections down and payments up.
1. Give different payment options
When it comes to getting paid, variety is key. You need to make it as easy as possible for your customers to submit payment. This means being able to pay online or with a credit card. Nowadays businesses need to be ready to accept payments on the go. There are plenty of options for credit card payments. As an incentive, you can offer a $5 or $10 discount if they sign up for auto pay online. You want to make sure you collect the email addresses of any new customers and ask them whether they want to set up auto pay or credit card billing.
2. Try and get customers to prepay
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Paying for the year upfront is convenient for the customer and great for your business. Of course not everyone can afford to pay a lump sum up front but an incentive may help. Offer maybe a 5% discount if they do. This can bring in a nice sum of money in prepaid billing that can give you a “line of credit”.
3. Bill well before services are rendered
If you have customers that are on a contract, you should invoice them well before services are rendered. So at least 2 weeks or even a month before you provide services. This will help ensure that you are getting paid and collections will stay at bay.
4. Use a factor
If you are having trouble collecting money or you just don’ t have the time to dedicate to tracking people down, a factor may be the answer. They will take over your billing and pay you a percentage of whatever the invoice is. They will then do all the legwork of collecting the money.
5. Provide incentives to your billing admin
Most landscape companies have their billing and collections handled by one person. In order to get more money in the door, you can incentivize them with a bonus. Set up some parameters like they need to collect all receivables by a certain date. Maybe 30 or 60 days. Keep in mind that if you were using a factor or collection agency, you would be paying them some commission. So offering up a bonus to your billings person makes sense.
6. When all else fails..call in the collectors
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Collections may be a last-ditch effort to get paid, but at the very least you will get some money. Invoices that are past 120 days overdue should be sent to collections. Going this route will mean that the agency can take upwards of 50% of the invoice, but that’s better than nothing. With that being said, many times mentioning the word collections is enough to push a client to pay their bill.