Forum Discussion

Derek1's avatar
Derek1
Contributor 3
2 years ago

Suspend a recurring job account for non-payment

I own a residential lawn and yard maintenance business.  Recurring job visits is our bread and butter.  Mowing is about half of our revenue.  We require a credit card on file, and auto-pay after each visit.  We use Jobber's payment feature for this.  This works really well, and eliminates accounts receivable.  Occasionally a customer's credit card does not process.  At that point, we receive an email from "The Jobber Team".  The heading is:  Automatic payment for "John Customer" failed.  That is helpful.   

I would like to see the following in Jobber, with automated functions.  The owner (me) could set parameters/thresholds for the activities.  But I really want to automate this process!

  1. Instantly when card is declined:  Customer automatically receives an email and text, letting them know that their card failed.
  2. The email and text include the invoice, payment link, and link to update their card.
  3. The email and text are re-sent every day until payment is received.
  4. The job is automatically suspended.  In other words, the future visits are flagged or suspended in Jobber until the account is paid and a card is on file.
  5. A report that shows on the dashboard for all credit cards that were declined.
lawn care
online payments

2 Replies

  • julie's avatar
    julie
    Builder 2
    2 years ago

    Hi Derek, thanks for your post!

    These are great suggestions and I can see how your ideas can help automate your process more efficiently.

    I’ve forwarded your ideas to Success as they collect all feedback to share with our Product Team who consolidates customer ideas/feedback so we can have a pulse on what would help our customers the most overall.

    Curious to hear from other members to see if they have any out of the box ideas or workarounds!

  • JobFlowReader's avatar
    JobFlowReader
    New Member
    2 hours ago

    There isn't a setting that pauses a recurring job when a card declines, but you can automate most of the follow-up.

    First, how failed automatic payments work, according to Jobber's Automatic Payments help article: the charge is tried once and not retried. Admins get an email and an activity feed notification, and the invoice shows a banner. You then take payment with Collect Payment on the invoice, and a new card saved there is used for future automatic payments.

    To automate the chasing:

    1. Invoice follow-ups (Connect plan and up): up to two reminders for past-due invoices, set in days after the due date (up to 90), sent the same way as the invoice. The client needs overdue invoice follow-ups switched on. I couldn't confirm whether these send for an invoice whose automatic payment failed, so test it on one client.
    2. Custom automation builder (Jobber's pricing page lists custom workflow automations on Grow): trigger "X days after invoices are due", a condition on invoice status, then an action to notify the client and/or add a tag such as "non-payment". You can set up a few of these at different day counts. Jobber's own sample is "Tag delinquent clients after 30 days of non payment".
    3. Before the crew goes out, filter your client list by that tag and call or skip those clients. Remove the tag once they've paid.

    Actually stopping the visits is still a manual step, but the tag gives you a list to work from instead of relying on memory.