Hello, we were actually in the same exact position a couple of years ago. We were trying to figure out the best way to save this money, knowing that jobber does not have a built in option to apply the fee. Your current idea is exactly what we decided to do. We created a non-taxable line item called "credit card processing fee". In the description we explained what this 3% fee was for, and that it only applied to credit card transactions. We found the based process is to put it on all quotes, and also verbally explain the fee during the sales process. There is not a way for Jobber to automatically calculate the fee, so you do need to manually calculate 3% of the subtotal and type in the value. If it is a job that our technicians are creating the invoice and collecting payment in the field, they simply delete this line item on the final invoice before collecting payment. If the scope of work changes onsite, then the technician would either need to update the fee amount themselves, or call into the office to get it adjusted if they need assistance.
This works really well, and we were able to save almost $40,000 the first year we started doing this. What we found is that most people will naturally use a credit card when there is no fee because it is easiest, and maybe they earn credit card points. However, when there is a processing fee, most people will pay with check or cash. We have noticed that we run way less credit card transactions now, and if someone does, it doesn't bother us because our fee is covered. I know other companies will just raise their price to cover this. My opinion on that is if you can raise your price and still make as many sales, then you should be raising your price anyway lol. Why raise the price, make yourselves less competitive, and make the customer pay more, if you are even keeping that additional money? So we choose to lay the option out very clearly, they can choose how they want to pay, it everyone is happy. In our state, you are not allowed to chare a processing fee for debit card transactions to consumers; however there is still a processing fee for us (the company collecting pay) to run the card. So we simply made the decision to not accept debit cards.
Hopefully this was helpful. You should 1000% do this. Feel free to ask me any additional questions that you might have.
