Hi Semy,
My customers can Pay on the day or pay in advance. If they choose to pay in advance they get 1 free clean for every 6 cleans they buy. I estimated that it takes me nearly as long to collect the money on the day as it does to clean the bin, therefore it pays me and the customer feels good as they get something free. I call it buy 6 get 1 free deal! Also if they are not in you are then into returning at some point. What, I have found is that you can not push all customers down this path but those that do will save you time and money. If you adopt a policy that does not accept pay as you go you will certainly alienate some customers. I have also found that many new customers may be wary of paying up front until they can trust you as a company. Therefore, customers who start as pay as you go may later change to pay in advance. With reference to the pay as you go customers, I collect the next time I clean, and only do evening collection if I feel the round is getting behind too much. I only allow a Pay as you go customer to get up to 4 cleans behind, or 2 cleans if I don't trust them! The competition in this area will now only take on customers who pay for the year up front, but they have been established for 5 years plus and are in the enviable position of being able to ''cherry pick''. However, this means that I have picked up some of their potential customers. When starting up new I feel you can not afford to cherry pick, but as time goes on and you get more established you can root out the pain in the arse customers and eventually convert customers to payment methods that you want, preferably by using the carrot method rather than the stick method.
Hope this helps, but at the end of the day there is no right or wrong way and therefore you can mix and match all ways, just make sure you keep good records and if a customer disputes your payment records you will have an audit trail to look back on.
Regards,
Nev.