Streamline your business

Plumbers and electricians are two of the slowest groups to adopt providing EFTPOS facilities for customers.
It’s time for maintenance and small contract plumbers in particular to do so but not for the reasons you might think.

Pest control companies, glaziers, garage door service companies and a host of home service businesses require payment on completion. Indeed some require credit card details prior to booking an appointment.

The biggest source of complaint as we discussed in a recent issue of Plumbing SA is a failure to communicate well with a customer. Pricing is the single biggest source of complaint and being paid on the spot can actually reduce those complaints.

When a plumber comes and clears a blocked drain and sends an invoice a week or so later he has already created a barrier to payment. The customer has had time to dwell on this invisible servicing of his drains. Were they really that blocked? …..I don’t think the plumber was here for the 90 minutes shown on the invoice … I don’t remember him using a drain cleaning machine and why is he charging me extra for it? The result may be a questioning of the account or worse a refusal to pay.

 

In setting out to write this article it was not the intention to promote the new Commonwealth Bank EFTPOS Service for PIA Members but we are very pleased to announce that we have negotiated an extremely competitive rate for members.

The PIA receives no financial benefit.

The desire of the PIA is to put in place as many benefits that assist members in reducing their operating costs and improving the financial success of your business.

Please see the flyer in this issue of Plumbing SA if you wish to learn more.

The old arguments that you are there to plumb not collect money or you don’t want employees to handle cash no longer cut it. If you aren’t paid for a month, it’s also going to cost you more than the EFTPOS fee.

The simple fact is that everyday your cash is in someone else’s pocket it’s costing you.
For each month you are not paid you are effectively giving your customer a 5% discount.

Collecting your money on the spot reduces the amount of paperwork you need to do when you get home.

Most customers have credit cards and are quite used to paying by card on the completion of the job. Employees are not handling cash and can no more fiddle the books than they may do already. You are legally entitled to add the cost of the credit card transaction into your invoice, so EFTPOS should not add to your business costs but should significantly improve your cash flow, reduce worrisome bad debt problems and the need to engage debt collectors.

EFTPOS Mobile has been available for some time and now is the time to adopt its use to reduce your work load and reduce your exposure to difficult customers.