The more processes you automate or streamline in your business, the better your overall effective hourly wage can be. If you move from a cash system to a payment app, you’re moving in the right direction!
When you’re running a business, there is nothing quite so important as getting paid. So it’s critical to figure out the best ways to ensure that you’re getting paid quickly. In this article, we’ll run through a list of some of the common ways to get paid and their advantages and disadvantages.
The first and most common way is cash. With cash, you don’t have to worry about transaction time or processing fees. The money is immediately in your pocket.
Though it’s fun to make it rain, there are a lot of problems with cash beneath the surface.
While we don’t endorse this at all, one of the most common reasons operators accept cash is to “keep it off the books”. This is a nice way of saying “evade taxes” which is a dangerous (not to mention illegal) game to play.
Paper checks are a not-to-distant cousin of cash. With today’s mobile banking technology, depositing paper checks is easier than ever. Still, it’s an additional step and requires logging the payment manually which still leaves room for error.
One benefit of paper checks over cash is that there is a paper trail (no pun intended) which can help you in the event you forget to account for the payment or in case you lose the check.
Payment apps are a great step up from cash and paper checks. There are no fees (or minimal fees) and you don’t have to bring the money to the bank to deposit it.
But while these apps are easier to work with than cash, they do have a few downfalls.
Most of the large, all-inclusive accounting softwares allow you to send very detailed invoices and accept payments through them.
While these softwares can be extremely robust and complex, there are a few things to consider before paying for one.
At Check, we have built, and are consistently improving, an all-in-one lawn care business management app, so accepting payments requires no additional effort on your part.
When you mark a job as complete in the app, Check automatically sends an invoice to your client via text or email with a secure payment link. They can open that link on any device - their smartphone or computer - and pay with their card, Apple Pay or Google Pay in seconds. They don’t have to download another app, sign up for an account or jump through any hoops. Simple.
The payment shows up immediately in Check, adjusts the client’s balance and the funds are deposited into your bank account within a couple of days.* You don’t have to do a thing and you don’t have to worry about your clients having cash or Venmo.
Even though we’re biased, we like to be fair, so we’ll share the disadvantages here too. There are fees. Since we offer Check for free, we take a 1% transaction fee in addition to the payment processing fee charged by Stripe of 2.9% + $0.30. Our 1% fee helps us stay in business and keep improving Check for you. We make money when you make money. We believe that it’s worth it in order to not have to worry about invoicing or payments at all, allowing you to reclaim your nights and weekends from the drag of admin work.
Pro Tip: Bake these fees into your prices so that you net the same amount as if you would without the fees. For example: increase the price of a $40/cut yard to $43/cut. That covers the fees, saves you a lot of time, and gives your client’s a better experience with your business now that they will be communicated with more consistently and professionally than ever.
The more processes you automate or streamline in your business, the better your overall effective hourly wage can be. If you move from a cash system to a payment app, you’re moving in the right direction! And if you’re looking for ways to keep client management, job schedules, routing, invoicing, and payments all consolidated within one app, give Check a try. You can download it from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store for free and sign up in less than a minute. Or, just click here to be taken to our download page!
* The first time you accept a payment, Stripe (our payment processor) will hold the funds for a 7-14 days as a safety measure. But once that first transaction goes through, subsequent payments will be deposited in 2-3 days.
