I recently had a job where the customer tried to pay in various formats and payment was never able to go through. I ended up leaving and hoping they would pay at a later date. Thankfully they did pay a few days later. How do others go about this potential issue?
I have thought it may be a good idea to require a small deposit to make sure payment is able to be made before the job is started.
ALWAYS take a deposit and ALWAYS require a credit card be on file. You also need to have in your contracts that if they don't pay after a certain amount of time you will charge the credit card on file. This needs to be on the quote that they sign. This is a non negotiable. Nothing gives me less energy than chasing down someone for a few hundred dollars.
For bigger jobs, arrange the time that you are going to do the final walk through and take payment. Before that, make sure to schedule your time to do your prefinal walkthrough where you can get your punch list.
I always require the materials deposit upfront. If I’m unsure about a new client, I’ll require a 50% deposit of the labor to help curb any issues.
Yes Queen. 🤜💥🤛
Thank you for the information. I started a landscaping company about a year ago, and asking for a deposit on materials is something I will start doing. This was helpful.
We are in California, so the law is very specific on what we can collect (10% or $1,000, whichever is less), but we ALWAYS collect a deposit unless it is a small service 1-day job. Red flag if they have issues paying the deposit.
That's great information. I noticed that issue a lot when dealing with rental properties.
Same approach here — prepaid, deposit, or card on file, no exceptions. I get paid 100% of the time and don't spend any energy chasing people down.
I used to accept cash, knock-and-pay, or send invoices afterward. It became a nightmare to collect, and I won't go back to it. A handful of people decline because of a bad past experience with card on file, and that's fine — I'm okay losing those clients. The headache of chasing payment isn't worth saving a few accounts.
I am an electrical contractor for our contractors we do a payment schedule of 30% down before the start of job, 50% due when the rough in inspection is done, and the last 20% done at the finial inspection. This seems to work less stress.
Wow! Thank you all so much for the responses, this is great feedback! Since I own a labor only furniture assembly/light handyman business, I'll start asking for a initial deposit upfront just to make sure that the customer is able to pay once the job is completed. I'm thinking a small 10-15% upfront deposit would be good. Any thoughts on this approach?
For our business, we require an initial cleaning deposit upfront before the first appointment. That allows us to verify the payment method before we invest time and labor into the job. After that initial service, we keep the client’s card securely on file and simply charge it after each recurring cleaning.
I think the right payment policy depends on your business model. For one-time projects or first-time customers, collecting a deposit or verifying payment before starting the work can help avoid awkward situations later. It’s much easier to resolve a payment issue before the job than after you’ve already completed it.
Has anyone else changed their payment policies over the years? I’d be interested to hear what has worked well for other service businesses.
Deposits and card-on-file solve a lot of this, agreed. For the invoices that do go out net terms (recurring commercial clients, etc.), the piece I always struggled with was knowing ahead of time which ones were actually going to be a problem. I ended up building a small read-only Jobber add-on (staycovered.ca) that looks at each client's payment history and flags the invoices genuinely at risk before they're overdue, rather than after. Wasn't a professional dev before this, just used AI tools to put it together for my own business. Happy to share details if useful to anyone here.
