Are You Building a Business or Just Creating Yourself Another Job?
It’s easy as a small business owner to get caught up doing everything yourself. At what point do you start delegating, hiring, or putting systems in place so the business can operate without you being involved in every job? I’d love to hear how other owners are making that transition while still keeping quality and customer service high.
💡FEATURE REQUEST: Price Increases in Products & Services List
Do you increase prices for ongoing customers? Do you know how long it takes me to increase my prices for 700 ongoing clients in my cleaning business? Whether you increase your prices on an annual basis or just as needed in these unpredictable times, it would be easier to make these changes en masse in the Products and Services tab! How would it work? When editing a product or service line item in the Products & Services List, there should be an option to carry that modification over to any existing Jobs that have that line item on it. Currently, this would only update for new jobs created, but I'd love to see a little pop-up that says, "Would you like to change the price for existing Jobs with this line item? Yes/No" Use Case Example: Because I am in the cleaning industry, it will be my primary use case. Let's say you have a minimum price that every client's rate will be at or above. When you create a new job for a recurring customer, you add a line item titled "Minimum Rate + current year," like for 2020: "Minimum Rate 2020," which is $150. You also add another line item based on how your pricing model is set up - in this case, I will use a simple one: "Small House" for $10 "Medium House" for $30 "Large House" for $50 When it's time for your prices to increase, consider the following options: you could decide to raise prices only for people with large houses and keep your minimum rate the same, or you may want to increase the cost for clients who have been with you for more than 5 years. Instead of making this change one client at a time and trying to sort through who the change applies to, I could go to the Products and Services List and find the specific line item I want to modify. Then, I could edit the price in there! Ta Da! You've raised your prices! Why should Jobber care? This would be huge for any business industry that has recurring clients. ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, and other competitors already have this feature. I have found other threads that mention something like this or frustrations with how to go about raising prices. This would allow businesses that only see customers once or twice a year to set up their customers as recurring with one Job, saving them a lot of time and effort as well. You'd have at least one very loyal customer in me! I've spoken to two support agents who thought this was a simple but fantastic idea! My next price increase is in June, and I'd love you guys if you saved me weeks worth of work in a single click 🤞🙏 QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, FEEDBACK, AND MORE USE CASES WELCOME!!Should customers pay more if they refuse auto-pay?
Auto-pay saves a lot of admin time in a recurring service business. Manual billing sounds simple until invoices sit unpaid, cards fail, reminders pile up, and someone has to decide whether to pause service. That extra follow-up has a cost. I don’t think every customer who avoids auto-pay is a bad customer. Some people just prefer more control. But if one customer requires more billing work every month, should they pay the same price as someone on auto-pay? I’m starting to think manual billing fees make sense. Something simple like: “Auto-pay is included with monthly service. Manual invoice payment is available for an added admin fee.” Do you require auto-pay, charge more for manual billing, or let customers pay however they want?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.
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.
How to offer financing options to customers who can’t pay upfront?
As a HVAC Contractor, we are thinking about financing our service to our client who cant affort the Lum some of money up front, can I get some advice for the best way possible to start some kind of financing program from our clients or recommendation of any financing solutions.
