Forum Discussion

Chloe's avatar
Chloe
Contributor 2
3 months ago

Advice adding the credit card service fee to invoices

Hello Jobber Community! I'm an operations contractor for a Denver-based tree care company, and I'm hoping to crowdsource some insight...

Does anyone have advice on how to best navigate charging clients for credit card processing fees?

I actually just discovered today that it is not illegal in the state of Colorado (as well as many other states) to add that 2ish% credit card service fee to invoices, and I’m hoping to hear your experiences or strategies.

Currently, Jobber doesn’t have a feature to automatically apply a designated service fee when clients choose to pay with a credit card through the digital invoices we send. This creates a few challenges:

  1. We’d need to ask the client ahead of time how they plan to pay so we can manually add the service fee to their invoice. Totally fine.. except...
  2. If they tell us they want to pay by credit, but decide to pay by debit after they've been invoiced, it creates an administrative mess—we’d have to issue a refund, send a new invoice, reverse transactions in QuickBooks, and add weeks to securing that revenue once and for all. Woof. 

How do you all manage this in your business? Do you:

  • Absorb the cost of credit card fees as a business expense and increase the cost of your services?
  • Offer a “cash discount” instead of a service fee?
  • Use another tool or workaround to handle these situations?

My goal is to make sure we're being as transparent as possible with our clients, continue offering competitive bids, protect our revenue, and keep our administrative overhead as lean as possible. Any advice or insights would be super helpful! Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts!

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  • Jj81's avatar
    Jj81
    Contributor 2
    3 months ago

     Hi, I’m Joel, and I run a sprinkler company.

    I recently contacted Jobber’s customer support team to request the integration of a 3% convenience fee for credit card payments. They said some states don’t allow it, but I don’t think that’s true where I live.

    For example, my friend runs an HVAC company, and their invoicing software automatically adds the credit card fee when customers choose that payment method. I’ll ask for the name of their software as a comparison.

    Also, businesses in my area, including the city government, charge this fee. I recently paid my property taxes with a credit card and was charged a 3% convenience fee, so I don’t see how this could be illegal here.

    This feature would really help. This was my first year using Jobber, and managing this manually during our busy fall season was overwhelming. With four technicians doing 10 blowouts a day (40 invoices daily), I couldn’t keep up. Blowout costs vary, so I had to calculate the 3% fee manually. Eventually, I gave up and just absorbed the fee, which hurt our bottom line.

    We’re already paying Jobber fees for using their payment system, plus the 3% credit card fee. That adds up. Adding this feature would save time and money while making invoicing more efficient.

    I hope Jobber considers adding it soon!

  • JulieB's avatar
    JulieB
    Contributor 2
    3 months ago

    I'm struggling with this as well. We have been adding it into the cost for the most part, and if it is a really large job, we ask them to mail a check. This can delay work and is problematic. I like your idea about a cash discount, that could work.