Making Professional Service Payments Hum Like Retail

So you finally have a skill worth charging some significant skrill for “pardon the new-speak”.  Well, welcome to A/R we are glad you could make it.  Let’s talk a little about receiving payment, etiquette, respect for the customer, and the bottom line.    We are going to explore the psychology of receiving payment from the gimble locked noob clutching the mouse at 4 am crying because QuickBooks receivable accounts don’t automatically reconcile with the journal ledgers from the list items required for a net-worth style of accounting to the free flowing Willy that scoots his payments in from square up and PayPal to anywhere he wants and hopes he makes the rent next Tuesday.

We at Upsilon Payments have found that your psychology needs to meet its match in the product you receive payment with.  Freewheeling Willy needs someone to square him up with standardization of accounts and gimble lock noob needs someone to tell him it’s going to be ok, just reconcile it best you can and call an accountant if you can’t get it all.  But how do we do this?  Two ways.  ONE we give our customers an A/R portal that offers a myriad of options for… invoiced recurring, non-pin swiped card present, ACH recurring, card present, and pretty much anything else you can think of, we have a lot of customers, and they all do it different a little bit.  TWO, and this is the big one, we let the customers pay the bill themselves.  It is amazing if a customer really wants your services, you would be surprised that they actually know to the penny exactly what they owe you and by when without penalty.  And they also know what card, ACH, or other that they can pay you with that best suits them at that particular time.

So then we go to etiquette.   Presumably, if someone is paying you money they are somewhat “upscale” to some degree.  I would imagine they have a credit card that gives them a trip to Hawaii every few years or at worst helps them beat inflation.  Are you going to tell this customer “wait I want you to enter your PIN number so I can save 2.40”?  I hope not.

The fact of the matter is about 12% of your customers don’t care at all, for them withdrawing from ACH is fine, and that is good for you, at .19 cents a check like WePayOnline offers you are rolling down gravy river with biscuit wheels at that point.  About 30% of your customers are paying with debit cards, they like the benefits of using a card but they aren’t into the whole credit thing, probably because of religious upbringing or because no one will give them credit anymore.  You can hassle them for a PIN and if you are rolling like Wal-Mart I think you should. But… if you are providing professional services whether in child care, educational, food service (yes that is professional), taxi service, and too many others to count, then your best customers are the customers with plenty of money.  Who are they?  They have the platinum card that costs a whole lot to process and gives them trips to Maui.  They keep coming back, and they aren’t really concerned if you are charging them 400.00 or 700.00 this month they just want the job done.  At WePayOnline we have found that the people that pay attention to these customers and let them recur pay with their phone and do it their way win in spades.

So do a little thinking about your professional services and think if you are really letting the professionals pay.