[Pole 2 Pole]

Why not just put sort code/account number on back of all slips and when someone owes enough to require a payment,then they can send cheque OR  make a one off payment into your account as and when you ask them to. No D/D No falling behind or getting ahead with payments. This is what i do and it keeps everything simple. 

[Steve CM]

your missing the point! DD puts you in control not the customer!

[Pole 2 Pole]

Way too much aggro in my opinion. How does DD put you in control when all the the customer has to do at ANY time is cancel the DD. If they don't wanna pay ya,they wont.

[R W C]

Doesnt a direct debit come out on a certain date each month, surely this would work if you worked on a Monthly rota but majority of us work on a 4 weekly, so 4 Months time youll be 10 days out, and also will only get paid 12 times over the year rather then 13. How differcult is it to recieve a cheque, custys details on back goto wcp or what ever programme you got and mark paid, look at debt lists etc.

[Lee Pryor]

you guys really are missing the point completely. Cash flow is the most important thing in any business. the idear is that the cust doesnt have to actually do anything in order to pay. now try to imagine you have a couple of thousand customers, imagine if say 500 people are always late or you always have £15000 outstanding. are you getting it yet??

When you reach a certain size certain payment methods stop working for you. I could almost justify employing someone part time just to chase outstanding money

[Steve CM]

I could almost justify employing someone part time just to chase outstanding money

i've started to do it already lee. it costs me a hundred pound a week for someone to keep my cash flow coming in. i haven't got a couple of thousand customers yet but i turn over a good bit each month and for the sake of 400 quid its worth it. i think its all relative to the size and how you run your business. if your a sole trader with a good established round that you've had for years and not building then you probably have defined your round so much that your customers are trained. because i'm building at about 20-25 customers a week it soon can get out of hand with people not paying. ie sorting out the bad customers. the debt can soon rack up. i think my worst i had about 15k owed to me at one stage now after chasing them down and staying on top of it its under my monthly turnover and coming down all the time. and for me thats good. but if you keep building you need to stay on top of the debt, especially in the current financial climate

[stevekennedy]

How is it working out for you guys?

[Lee Pryor]

this is on the back burner at the moment steve as we are concentrating on getting new business in at the moment. i think we will get it in place later in the year when i can give it my full attention, but as i said earlier in the thread it is completely possible to do, but like alot of new things takes alot of time to get rolling. I had planned to do it before april as this is when we start to build up each year.

[gerard mcmanus]

I think this would suite some, but not the majority. I have a couple of large jobs that pay by bank tranfer but I tell my smaller residentials to pay by cheque if they are not in allot and write there name, address and booking its for on the back. I dont think I would easily control allot of bank tranfers easily.

Again it depends how much of a problem you have with late payments, I only have a small number of jobs that owe me money and always get it. Anyone that becomes problem payers get dropped.

Another thought would be my customer base. Allot of my customers are in the latter stages on there lives and dont think they would be happy with this method.

I suppose it would be ok if you just used it for any problem customers if you dont think it would be too much hassle managing it. But if a customer is always in, pays ontime no probs why ask them to start paying by DD and reduce you profit no matter how small without reason.

For me the cost of this and the pottential hassell of tracking it would outweight the benefit of getting payed on time bt them few problem custies.

Again bigger companies might feel differently.

[stevekennedy]

I was thinking that it would save time collecting from the customer or posting invoices.

If you are making say £24 per hour doing resi work. (And I'm not saying that is what I make)

That's 40p per minute. If you save 3 mins or so on each job this would soon add up.

Some resi window cleaners on here are doing 40 houses in a day.

Could save a tidy amount. Course some guys like the chat with the custie. Good for customer relations etc

[gerard mcmanus]

I guess so, but in truth it doesn't work like that, you dont save the money you just save the couple of minutes to take you to knock there door and say that x amount please. Bt the time saved could be ofset by the time you spend checking that payments have went through, and if one cancles there, you are still going to have to send out invoices.

I dont know how it would work but, if they do pay by dirrect debit does it come up there name, I mean how do you know what customer it is for, and even if it comes up mr dochery tranfered x amount, I have about 20 docherty's how do you know which one it is.

Also as someone mentioned, I work 4 weekly not monthly and dd come of a certain day of the month.