Recurring Billing Management
Three Reasons to Automate Your Billing
About three weeks ago I attended a business networking event.
The room was packed, more than usual. But given the economic news of the day, that was no surprise. When folks are “running scared” it’s not surprising to see business owners “pounding the pavement” to drum up business.
In walking around the room, one theme kept recurring: more and more people were waiting to get paid for products or services already rendered.
I call it the “check’s in the mail” game.
So how do you deal with this problem?
For starters, I’ll assume you already accept credit cards for your business. In this case, just mention that you’re no longer accepting checks.
No, it’s not heresy. You can say this to your customers and clients. It’s not like they don’t have any to give you for payment.
The next step would be to institute a recurring billing program for those customers that are normally invoiced on a cyclical basis (i.e. weekly or monthly).
Starting a recurring billing program will…
- save you time
- save you money
- help you get paid on time
Recurring Billing Simplified
How does it save you time?
Here’s a quick (real life) example…
A friend of a friend (not a client) has a coaching business. Typically, she works with 20 to 30 people at a time, some in group coaching situations, some in one on one coaching programs.
Some pay her by check. And that typically means waiting for a check.
Some pay by credit card, either in a payment plan or as part of an ongoing monthly system. Do you know how she enters their credit card data?
Manually. Each month, she logs into her gateway and manually enters credit card info for roughly 10 to 15 folks each month. By her own estimation, it probably takes an hour or two each month.
Not a big deal?
It is.
Besides wasted hours doing repetitive non-essential tasks for your business, don’t forget to factor in opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost involves all the other things you could be doing to grow your business that you are NOT able to do, primarily because your time is spent elsewhere. Learn more about opportunity cost here.
Let’s talk about money.
This one is easy…
- Chasing checks
Re-invoicing people costs you money (and time) since you have to track who’s paid what. Then people get away with late payments.
Each day you haven’t been paid for services rendered is a real cost to your business.
- Manual credit card entries
Remember our example above. Factor in the lost 2 or 3 hours each month. Now calculate your hourly rate, i.e. what your time is worth in your business.
For the person above, she charges upwards of $150 per hour for coaching services. Two or three lost hours each month comes out to $300 to $450 each month.
Wasted.
This isn’t monopoly money.
Real dollars are wasted, because each hour you’re not productive in your business doing simple clerical tasks instead of working with clients, etc., costs you each and every month.
How about helping you get paid on time?
If you’ve followed this far, the answer is “easy breezy” as my wife likes to say. Once a recurring billing program is in place, the charges to your customer’s or client’s credit cards happens automatically, on a mutually agreed upon date.
Now, instead of running to the mailbox to see if the promised payment has arrived, you sit back while money flows into your bank account, as if on auto-pilot.
Talk about “easy breezy.”
And in my book, a heck of a lot easier than another phone call to someone asking the all too familiar question, “hey, where’s my check?”
To get set up with a NEW recurring billing program for your business,you can:
- Request a free merchant account quote
- Follow the link and search our merchant account providers in the directory
We look forward to your feedback, so please leave us a comment here on the page.
