How do contracts work?

Here's what I do.... or will do (since I'm just starting)... If you have them on a 12 month contract, you tell them it will be $X.xx broken down into 12 equal payments. You tell them what all you plan to do for that money and how many times through the different months they can expect you to visit their property.

[FourSeasons]

Lawn care business tips

I was going to average it out so that they pay the same amount all year to. But I was thinking if the situation came up where the customer was to cancel for some reason, then I wouldn't have recieved full payment for the services I was providing for them up until the cancelation time. I don't have any of my customers on contracts because I just learned about the residential contract thing not to long ago. So starting next season I'm going to switch everyone over. I'm not worried about losing customers because I always get little notes that come in with my payments for the month of telling me how nice the lawn looks and what a great job I've done. So I was just thinking about charging at the end of the month for the services I provided for just that month. I'm still confused about Rodman (pnplawn) when he says Originally Posted by [b Quote[/b] ]Are you telling me that you drop the price when the season slows down? Because when I do a contract I charge same for the whole year rather I mow every week or once a month. So what does he base his same monthly charge off of. Weekly summer mowing. I don't see how a customer would want to pay the same amount for a Biweekly service, as *they would for a weekly service.

__________________
Rob
Green Image Lawn & Landscape

\"If you don't feel the same way about Friday nights as you do Sunday nights, then you are not doing the right thing.\"

[Clean Lawn]

I am not sure either. I have different rates for weekly and bimonthly services. We dropped the onces a month amounts because we are a newer company and right now we just aren't getting those requests. We get one time work jobs but thats not the same.
For those customers that are weekly and/or bimonthly because I still have both when it is roughly 10 days before the end of the month I start getting the invoices ready to mail out. Because we are only a few months old and only billing a few people this doesn't take me but maybe one evening worth of work. Then I send them out the next day. Most of our customers leave us their payments when we come to service their homes but a few send in the mail too. So we bill before we come to service for that month and get payment in advance now to avoid not being paid for any services. We didn't push a pay by this day because like I said we are still small and most of our customers leave them at their homes the first time we come to service their lawns for the month but starting next year with new contracts we are going to have a pay by this day. As we grow I think it will be much easier for us and if we pick up a lot of new contracts next spring then we might include paypal as a means for our customers to pay for their services. Does anyone else use paypal?

[FourSeasons]

Paypal is a good idea. Does that make it so people can go to your website and pay their bill. I'm not sure exactly how it works. I've been considering a credit/debit card machine for next season. I still havent decided yet. Is anyone else using those for people to pay for lawn care services. Or is it just a waste of money.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]We dropped the onces a month amounts because we are a newer company

Next year when customers switch to twice or once a month I'm raising the price per cut. Because this is the same time of the year when there is leaves all over the ground. Which takes more time to mow becuase the bag fills up faster and theres more waste to dispose of. I don't like just mulching a bunch of leaves into a customers lawn.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]Most of our customers leave us their payments when we come to service their homes but a few send in the mail too

I bill everyone at the end of the month becuase its to hard for me to keep track of who didn't pay becuase they werent home or whatever the reason might be. Its alot more organized for me.
I just started in May of this year. Ive learned so much stuff with alot left to go. And alot of help from this site. I wish I would have found this site long time ago. I've learned alot of things the hard way. Probably the best way though to.

[Clean Lawn]

Paypal works from two different ways if I understand it correctly. You can pay via transferring money from a bank account to the paypal account (which is like a bank account) or credit card to the paypal account. Then you need to take the funds from the paypal account to deposit into your personal bank account or business account. But you have to have a bank account to set up a paypal account. Paypal is used by a lot of people who sell things on ebay or online. I know some bigger companies use it for payments and said it makes it easier for them. You do get charged per transaction which is just like a credit card terminal but for the credit card terminal you do need a land line (no cell phones for this). So your paying for the extra land line, the credit card terminal and a fee per transaction. For paypal your paying a transaction fee only. So this is the reason I was considering going with paypal. If that helps anyone make their decisions based on this information.

Here's a suggestion when using PayPal... Keep in mind that they charge a fee when someone pays you (2.9% + $0.30). If I were going to take PayPal payments, I would charge the customer a "Service Fee" of that much to allow them to pay using PayPal. I mean, other people do it... people charge $5 all the time to take payments by phone and etc...

Just my thoughts.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (pmblair @ Oct. 22 2007,12:44)]Here's a suggestion when using PayPal... Keep in mind that they charge a fee when someone pays you (2.9% + $0.30). *If I were going to take PayPal payments, I would charge the customer a "Service Fee" of that much to allow them to pay using PayPal. *I mean, other people do it... people charge $5 all the time to take payments by phone and etc...

Just my thoughts.

Be careful charging people extra for using a credit cad, FEDERAL GOVERMENT has put a stop to it. You can no longer charge extra for accpeting credit cards. Payments by phone are on overdue payments not on current payment and that fee is for convience of paying by phone to bring the account up-to-date not for using a credit card.

[Steve]

Tim that is a very good point. I don't know about paypal, but most credit card merchant accounts forbid you from charging a customer extra for using a credit card. I do think an exception was made for gas stations because the profit margins are so slight.

[FourSeasons]

That must be why some small stores have signs posted - Credit Cards Accepted

Stores can charge extra for debit purchases though. At least in Washington.

Yeah, I'm in Oregon, and all the time at those small minute markets like 7-11 and others, they charge .35 when paying with my cards, and its been that way for atleast the last year.