Payment Nightmare: Should Contractors Require a Deposit Before Starting a Job?
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.
What do you do when a customer goes radio silence when their bill is due?
Does anyone have any advice on how to handle a customer who has gone radio silent without paying their bill? We finished the project and had a few punch list items to finish. The homeowner is not returning my calls to schedule the return date and they have an outstanding balance. This is a new issue for us so we feel a little unsure how to proceed. We'd love some ideas!Banking with a Credit Union vs a Large Bank
Your Bank Should Work With You — Not Just Hold Your Money I used Navy Federal for my business for a while. Honestly, it was fine — until it wasn't. Someone got into my account and started sending money out. That's when I found out just how unprepared they were to handle something like that. Every person I talked to had a different answer. No clear process, no consistent protocol — just whoever picked up that day making it up as they went. The security stuff alone was wild. I went in to do a wire transfer and nobody asked for secondary ID. Went back another time — different employee — and suddenly it was required. Which is it? If your own staff doesn't know the rules, the rules aren't actually protecting anyone. Then to top it off, an employee talked me into doing a cashier's check instead of a wire because he said it would be faster. I took it to my new bank and they put a 7-day hold on it. A week of frozen money because someone gave me bad advice. That whole experience made me realize credit unions — at least the ones I've dealt with — are basically just holding your money. And for a personal account, maybe that's enough. For a business, it's not. What Big Banks Actually Offer That Credit Unions Don't After that mess, I looked into Chase and US Bank. The difference in what they offer for business accounts is significant. ACH verification. You can set up filters so only specific, pre-approved companies can pull from your account. If something unexpected tries to come through, it gets blocked. Navy Federal had nothing like this. Check verification (Positive Pay). You upload the checks you've issued. If a check comes through that doesn't match, the bank flags it before it clears. Simple concept, big protection. Wire transfer controls. Large banks have actual multi-step verification for wires — callbacks, dual authorization on large amounts, confirmation steps that make it hard to accidentally send money somewhere wrong. Not "ask for ID sometimes." Business credit. This is a big one. Credit unions tend to have low limits, limited products, and not much flexibility. Big banks have dedicated business credit cards, lines of credit, SBA loans, equipment financing — actual tools to help your business grow. If you ever need capital, a credit union is going to hit a ceiling fast. Online banking built for business. Multiple users with different permission levels, QuickBooks and Xero integrations, real-time alerts, the works. A lot of credit unions are running systems that feel like they were built for a personal savings account. 24/7 support. Something goes wrong Friday night — you need help Friday night. Big banks have business banking lines around the clock. Credit unions are often a Monday morning call back.
How to Calculate Your True Hourly Rate?
Hi all, just wanted to mention that we realized in our first year scraping by that we weren't covering our costs of doing business. Even though we run our business out of our home, we jave insurance and licensing, vehicle expenses etc. That are part of our overhead. Finally we took all those expenses and added them up, divided by the normal number of business hours per month and made sure to build that into our hourly charge. Now we are able to set aside the money we need to come up with every 6 mo ths or annually and don't have to woory about spreading ourselves too thin when the expenses arrive. What are some shifts you made to build a sustainable business?
Invoice update via API
Jobber does not allow invoices to be updated and closed/marked as paid from externally. We use Xero as our main accounting system as it hooks into or bank. Every time we mark an invoice as paid in Xero, we need to manually close the corresponding invoice in Jobber. I have raised this multiple times with Jobber but it is not on their roadmap. Hoping there are more people out there with the same requirement to help boost this post so that Jobber can do something about it. Unless someone has found another way to do it. This will save at 30+ hours a month of man hour to change every invoice.What's Standard Gross Profit for Your Industry?
I once listened to Tom Reber preach about 50% gross profit and how if you aren't aiming for that, you are going to hurt yourself short/ longer term. He was basically saying, for every dollar you make, you need to make two. This has been super impactful for me and my business but I'm noticing on my really big projects, it's so hard to keep that. I have one $120k exterior BBQ that has definitely had some inefficiencies but we are probably looking at 35% end of day. But that's 35% of a large $$ so that is kind of ok. For those of you who do a good job tracking this (btw Jobber's gross profit calculator is objectively amazing for this btw)- what is your gross profit and what do you usually shoot for?You Don’t Have a Lead Problem You Have a Follow-Up System Problem
You’re not losing jobs to competitors you’re losing them in your follow-up. Most HVAC businesses I’ve seen don’t have a lead problem… they have a system problem: missed calls, no follow-ups, and zero tracking. The ones scaling consistently are doing 3 things right: Capturing every lead in a CRM Automating follow-ups (SMS/email) Running simple local campaigns that bring repeat jobs Curious what system are you currently using to track and convert your leads? If you’re open, I can share a simple setup that’s working for other contractors.
