Invoice Mowing CORRECTLY or LOSE Money

If you own a lawn and landscaping company or business or you're just getting started and trying to figure out this whole process thing. In today's video we're going to be talking about invoicing and billing, what that process should look like and really what the framework and the mindset should be around actually getting paid for the work that you do. One of the biggest things I do a lot of coaching, I do a lot of YouTube, a lot of people ask me questions. And one of the biggest hurricanes hurdles or downfall that most people fall into, me included when I first started is like how to collect payment. Because the kind of double edged sword here is number one, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to give you money. On the flip side of this is a lot of what we were doing in the beginning is not really scalable. I was taking cash from underneath the mat, was taking checks, Venmo Zelle credit card. If there was any way that somebody could pay us, like we were probably using it, which is cool. Like in the beginning, right? Because like you're, you're just, you're trying to make some money. When you only have one or two or three customers, you got to do what you got to do. But as you start to grow and scale, you have to start to think through this to actually systemize this stuff properly. All this stemmed from a question which we're going to kind of go in here today from Caleb. We got one question in our question submission form for the week. If you guys didn't know, you can ask me questions or 24, seven, seven days a week. Just go to in the link in the description. Just put your question in there, your company name and I will review it and answer it for you each week. This one's from Caleb from Spruce Lawn Care. His question for me is, hey, what's your system for overdue invoice follow up for the admin person? Do you have her call any open invoices every day? Good question. So real quick, I'm going to back this up. For anybody that's watching, for anybody that is collecting payment, I highly recommend to actually collect money as quickly as possible. So what we do inside of copilot CRM changing to homeworks here soon. So number one, we do require a card on file for all of our customers. And then number two, we charge that customer the build amount the second the job is completed. We do not do it manually or weekly or monthly. We do it immediately. Once the job is done, once the crew marks it complete it, auto Charges their card automatically. We don't even have to do it. If you're looking and thinking about setting that up, highly recommend to collect the money as quickly as possible. So that way you can take that money and go and multiply it. The faster you get the money in, the faster you can put it to work and invest it somewhere else. So let's answer, let's answer Caleb's question here. So what's the system for overdue invoices for an admin person? Okay, so for our admin person, Caleb, we have our office admin scrub the overdue invoices or the ones that are not paid outstanding invoices once per week. Okay, let me, let me actually back up on this. So she does it daily, but she doesn't call or work those outstanding ones each day, she works them each week. And when I say the word work, I mean like we try to retrieve the money. Let's just say for example, we go out, we mow the lawn today. So what we do is once the crew marks it complete, it will auto charge a customer. When it auto charges the customer, it's going to get an error that says decline card or insufficient funds, whatever that is. Right. For that what happens is we have our office manager, she'll go in, in the morning, first thing in the morning and she'll go to the overdue invoices for the day prior. And when there's an outstanding invoice, what she will do first thing she'll try to charge a card again and then if it still doesn't go through, she'll try to charge it through ACH because sometimes they have an ACH on file so she'll double tap it to see if it works and then most of the time it doesn't. And so if it doesn't, what she'll do, she'll go into their profile, put in the title of the jobs that they are balance just in case they pop up because co pilot is a little buggy, we all know how that is. And then what happens is she changes the customer type from a customer to balance due. She basically we have set up automations to where if you tag the customer a certain tag, it will notify them of like a day zero email is saying like hey, car didn't go through. And then on day two she'll send, you know, she'll tag it day two, day three, day five, day seven, day 12, day 15. Right. So we already have all that built on the back end. And so on day zero when it doesn't go through, she'll go in and tag it as day zero. It'll fire off a text in an email to the customer automatically. She doesn't have to do anything saying, hey, by the way, we serviced your lawn recently and the card did not go through. So just so you know, all of your services are paused until the payment is paid in full, then we can continue services. And then what she does is she also pauses the mow in the weed control and any kind of service that's open. So that way we're not continually mowing and doing weed control for this customer that owes us money. And I see a lot of people fall into this trap. They bill either weekly or monthly, and then a week or worse, a month goes by where the customer hasn't paid. But yet you've done three or four services for them. Like, no, we should stop that immediately. I don't want to continue to do that. Otherwise that could be a lot of money. And I mean, labor is the number one most expensive line item on a P and L. So why would I want to keep doing that? But I know your situation, Caleb. In this scenario, I think you do bill upon completion. As far as overdue invoices, she does contact them each week. Week she'll go through, and then I think there's a date on, like, when it was sent originally of, like, when that balance or invoice past invoice was due. And so she'll just be able to see, oh, it's been five days, so I need to tag it as day five. She doesn't really call them. It's really a lot. Through text and email, you'll be able to get probably 75, 80% paid up through text, continual text and email. Of just like an initial, hey, your car didn't go through. And then the second one being, like, by the way, if you don't pay it in like two weeks, in like a week, you probably. You're gonna get an over a additional fee, an outstanding invoice fee, which we say is 25 bucks. You know, kind of scare them with that, where it's like, hey, you're gonna get a overdue fee if you don't pay it within 14 days or 10 days. We put those wordage. Wordages inside. I don't think wordages is a. Is a word. We put that inside of the text in the email, and it just progressively gets, like, more straightforward and, like, mean, I guess of like, you. You owe us money in still a respectful and professional way versus, like, the first ones Just like, hey, this is a courtesy letting you know your car didn't go through. So we did. You know, it is paused. Your services are paused currently, but once you get that taken care of, we can go ahead and resume services for you. Make sure the lawn's still good. Look, building this kind of business can feel lonely. That's why we built a private school community that is based off of a ton of other home service business owners that are literally going down the same pathway as you. We are winning together. You get all the tools, resources and direct access to us. Join the movement today. The links in the description below at the end of, I think it's a 45 day process. So we have an iteration, multiple iterations of like day zero, day one, day three, day five, day seven, day 12, maybe day 15. And then after that it's like more like day 30. Because like if they don't pay within the first two weeks and you don't hear from them, literally the likelihood of them paying you is very, very low. So like I don't want to waste my admins time calling them a lot because I'd rather have her like calling pending estimates or something like that. That's more valuable. But at the end of the 45 day, we do give them, I think one phone call and then we leave a voicemail saying like, hey, if you don't give us a call back the next week we're sending your account to collections. And then after that it's out of our hands. We do educate the customer closer when we get towards the collections process of like what that would look like. And we try to scare them because like, dude, by day 30, 35, they haven't paid you. They probably block the number. They're probably not going to pay you. It's very, very rare. I think one out of like 100 people actually pay you by this point. After 30 days, what we do is we just kind of send more scare tactics of like, hey, what does the collection process look like? Well, this is what could happen if you're a homeowner and we file a small claims and they the collection of the agency files a small claims lien on your house. They could put a lien against your house in case you ever want to sell. Like, you're going to have to pay this debt. I'm going to share with you guys a little story back in the day. In the beginning I was very adamant about this. I was like, no, I mowed this lawn, I need to get paid for this. I was like, I Am so adamant about this. And there is one customer in particular that I remember. Every single time I was in that neighborhood, I saw. I drove by that house, and I would, like, knock on the door, see if I could catch them. Be like, hey, like, I called you like, 15 times in the last three weeks. I've texted you, I've emailed you. Like, I was ready to, like. And I mean, we're talking like, 40 bucks. It's probably like a 40 lawn cut, right? Or back then, at the time, it was probably like, $30. One day, I actually caught the husband pulling in in his truck. And I was in the company truck and everything. So I pull up, I park the truck, I get out. You know, I'm like, frantically walking over there. So he doesn't just run inside the house and, like, close the door. And I'm like, hey. Like, hey. You know, I introduced myself, I said, hey, my name is Will. I mow lawn. About a month, month and a half ago, I've been trying to contact you guys, trying to reach you guys, and, like, we. We haven't received payment. He was like, oh, man. Again, he gave me kind of like the sob story, you know. He was like, he's like, again, she didn't pay another bill. Again, kind of like, you know, blaming it on the wife. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. I don't know. But basically, he's like, all right, man. He's like, all right, all right, cool. Like, give me. Give me, like, five minutes. I gotta run inside. I gotta do this thing, and then I'll. I'll come back out. So there I am on the Porsche for $30, waiting for this guy to come in or go in, grab the cash, and then bring it out. Lo. He did. He came out. He's like, I'm so sorry, man. Here's your $30. I'm like, cool, thanks, man. And, like, after that, obviously, I'm not going to service their yard again because, like, it was a crucial pain to get paid. It taught me a very valuable lesson. I remember reaching out to a lot of my mentors at the time, and I'm like, hey, like, is this normal? Like, I do these services. I don't get paid. Like, what. What. What's the mindset around this? Like, help me out, because I'm very. Like, I'm losing sleep over this. I'm losing gray hairs because of this $30 right at the time, okay? This was the beginning. And a good mentor of mine basically said he was like, look, will, it's the cost of doing business at scale. If you want to grow something large, grow something big, and have ten hundred, maybe a thousand clients, maybe ten thousand clients. Whatever, whatever your goal is, whatever your dream is, whatever you want to build a 500,000 plus business, you're going to have more than 100 clients in. The likelihood of every single one of them paying you on every single job is just. It's not real, it's not logical. There will be people that don't pay you, and that's the cost of doing business. You have to bake that into your price. Knowing that there is a certain percentage of revenue that you are supposed to collect that you never will at certain dollar amounts, it makes sense to go and pursue. Send them to the collections agency, reach out to a small claims court and file a lien against their house. Like all that takes time, money, energy and effort. When for $30, save yourself the time and the headache and the stress, cut it as a loss, cut that customer out, flag their account, never take this customer again and just move on. Take the energy, the time and the efforts that you're going to use towards trying to recoup this $30. And it may not be $30, it may be $300, right? And just go put more door hangers out. Go find the next paying customer that actually will pay you and appreciate you. And so that was a very big lesson in my early career of learning that. And so for anybody that is just getting started, don't lose sleep over that stuff. Even at $300, if you calculate how much you would pay yourself, which, you know, most people, 20 or 30 bucks per hours, which you would probably pay somebody to do what you're doing. If you add up all the energy and time that you're going to spend filing a small claims court and sitting on the phone, like it's going to equal $300 anyway, right? So there's a certain dollar amount that you're going to need to come up with in your mind and in your heart and in your business to be like, hey, if it's over this amount, I'm going to like not let this one slide and pursue it. But if it's a, if it's a $30 cut or $100 cleanup or something like that, just cut it as a loss and move up on. Save your time, the energy and the efforts and just know that it's part of the game of business. It's part of business. It just is what it is. And so I didn't know that when I was first starting. Hopefully that helps if it did hit that like button. If you guys have any questions go ahead in the comments. Not the comments, the description below. Go ahead and leave me a question for my form in the Google form and it will get answered each week. Thank you guys so much. Have a great day. Have a great week. See you guys on next week.