You’re not going to get paid on time for every job you do. Sometimes the situation just gets out of your control. It’s a fact of life. Fortunately for service contractors, three of the most common reasons service contractors are not paid on time are within your control.

Before reading on, take a quick second to glance over the bolded heading below. If you can honestly say that your company has never lost revenue or had their cash flow suffer due to late payer, skip this post or try reading something like this, this, or this.

Lost Invoices

It’s amazing how generous service contractors can be. However, to get paid on time, you need to avoid the accidental freebie jobs. Invoices and completed work orders shouldn’t be filed under the seat in your tech’s vehicle. But somehow, it’s still a regular occurrence to find old invoices there when cleaning out the truck. If the customer doesn’t get the invoice, you’re certainly not going to get paid.

Your business needs a system to follow every job through from beginning to end to make sure that nothing gets lost in the shuffle and business of every working day. Your company should have a method to track each customer from the time they call requesting service, through the time your techs get the job, through the time they finish the work, through the time the customer receives the invoice, to the time you receive the money. Any gap in this work flow can mean lost revenue or a delay in cash flow.

Delayed Invoices

Customers–more than ever in this Internet age–expect to get their invoices right away. Many contractors, especially if they also work in the field, don’t keep up with their office work. That means that there can be quite a gap in time between when you do work and when your customer sees the bill.

It’s hard to expect timely payment from a customer, when it’s been so long since you completed the job that they hardly remember what the invoice is for. Customers have become used to receiving bills immediately. They’re also becoming more used to having invoices emailed to them, and then being able to pay those invoices online. To get paid quickly, it is important to bill quickly, in the field as soon as the job is completed if possible. When techs are able to create invoices and collect money via checks or credit cards for work they do in the field, you are far less likely to wind up waiting for payment or losing out on uncollected revenue.

Invoicing with Terms

The terms you offer can also have a negative impact on cash flow and timeliness of payments. Giving a customer 15 or 30 days to pay by cash or check invites the possibility of the customer forgetting about the invoice. Some contractors have gotten fed up with the issue of late cash or check payments and have just started to require customers to have a credit card on file.

Contractors that balk at having to pay 3% to the credit card companies often forget the cost of uncollected debt and the time and effort of having to call up and remind customers of past due invoices. Being able to capture signatures and accept credit cards in the field can be the difference between having a healthy cash flow and constantly be waiting on customers to pay their bills.

A predictable cash flow is incredibly valuable to service contractors. Your employees and vendors expect to be paid on time, and so should you. Putting systems in place to track work and invoices, making sure customers are billed quickly, and avoiding invoicing with terms are all ways to make sure you get paid on time.

What are some other ways to make sure you are paid in a timely fashion? Leave your ideas in the comments.

Service agreements are a great way to create regular re-occuring revenue streams for your company. But they can be a tough sell.

Your customers need to understand the value of service agreements. When they see how the plan and its benefits will save them time, money, and hassle, your number of service agreements will grow.

via Contracting Business: Establish Value to Boost Service Agreement Sales

Growing and keeping track of these service agreements is key to growth and creating value for your company.

What do you say when asked how many service agreements your company has? Has that number been reviewed? Is it accurate? Is the number of agreements growing, staying the same, or shrinking from year to year? How do you improve the numbers?

Why all these questions? It’s because the heart and soul of a company’s business are service agreements, and growing these agreements leads to growth of the company in service and sales. It’s therefore vital that the value of these agreements be firmly established on a continual basis — both externally and internally.

These service agreements are also what create real value for your company and make it more sell-able. No one is going to buy your list of names when you want to retire. But they may be willing to buy several thousand on-going service agreements.

This year’s ESC Version 10 release focused around streamlining data entry and data flow. Changes to the customer and dispatch module make it easier than ever to manage customers and contacts, schedule and dispatch technicians, and make sure they are always prepared with the right parts and equipment.

Redesigned Customer Module: The streamlined customer entry screen makes it easier to enter new customers and gives you better control of your data.

• Keeping in touch with the correct contact is easier with space for six detailed contacts per location.
• Correspond directly via mail merge by clicking the letter icon next to the contact’s name and selecting the desired template.
• A ‘date added’ field is auto-filled for all new customer accounts, so you can see when each customer was added and filter reports by date ranges of when a customer was added.
• Attach a sales person to each customer so that invoices will be auto-assigned to the designated sales person.
• ESC will automatically pick the correct city and state for new customers when you enter their zip code, after you import the zip codes for the states you service.
• The customer search field auto-fills after a few characters, and in most situations, you will not need to open up the detailed search box.
• The new customer search screen is both easier to use and more powerful, now allowing you to also search by contact names and email addresses.
• The software now catches duplicate customers before they are created, even if the address is not exactly the same.
• You can eliminate duplicate customers by merging locations—transferring all equipment, history, dispatches, service agreements, attached documents and even invoices from one location to another—making it perfect for transferring information from builder to buyer.
• Making a record inactive prevents those particular customers or locations from showing in filtered lists and on reports, effectively hiding a customer while retaining your historical records.

Expanded Dispatch Module: The redesigned dispatch entry screen makes sure that dispatched technicians are properly equipped for each job site they visit.

• The redesigned dispatch screen is easier to use and lets you browse through dispatch notes for a range of dispatches within one screen, and the improved layout and default sort option keep dispatches from appearing multiple times.
• The date and time stamp and spell checking is now available in the dispatch notes field.
• Printed dispatch tickets are customizable with the new layout designer. You can place your logo on your dispatches and include an area for your technicians to note their work. There are sample templates available to help get you started.
• Attached equipment is displayed in a separate tab, which allows equipment to be attached, added and edited all in one screen.
• A price field displays on the Parts tab, letting you put prices on parts attached to the dispatch. These parts and prices can then be transferred to the mobile clients and printed on dispatches.
• A search field now displays on the Dispatch Board, letting you easily find any dispatch by entering any part of the location name or address.

Service agreement updates: Updates to the service agreements module increase the connectivity among the agreement, the dispatch it generates, and the items in inventory.

• Parts added to service agreement tasks now flow automatically to the Parts tab on the dispatch with a zero price, and then into the related invoice. This ensures the technicians know what they need to take with them to complete the job, and so the parts will be removed from inventory.
• Now there is the ability to post agreement dispatches for a particular customer, which simplifies combining service work with planned maintenance.

Inventory enhancements: Changes to the inventory screens simplify the process of entering, adjusting, and managing inventory.

• The inventory entry screen opens in a separate window that enables you to enter parts on the fly.
• The redesigned screen also features a tabbed layout that groups similar items together and makes the screen easier to use.
• Alternate parts now are displayed as a tab on the screen.
• When searching for inventory parts, inactive parts are hidden by default.
• Import all the parts ESC perceives to be in a warehouse onto the Adjust Inventory screen. The quantities can be automatically set to zero, making this the perfect tool for entering physical inventory counts.

Enhanced reporting capabilities: Alterations to the reporting functions let users better view, compare, and edit reports.

• Users can now view an unlimited number of reports at once. This makes comparing reports a breeze.
• Closing a report now returns you to the module you were working in, but you can still change the report criteria when previewing by clicking the filters button in the toolbar.

Web Front Office overhaul: The Web Front Office received a major facelift in this version. The entire interface has been updated to look more modern, and several new features have been added.

• There is a new connections server, which has been completely redesigned to make it easier to use.
• A status light indicates if any portion of the connections server is not configured correctly.
• Run multiple reports directly from within Web Front Office.
• Expanded set up screens let you add technicians, configure dispatch boards, and add inventory items.
• Recall existing invoices and change or print them.
• Dispatch ticket printing is now supported, enabling technicians to print dispatches while in the field.

Mobile client changes: The mobile client also has many expanded features to make technicians even more efficient in the field.

• Inventory items entered on the parts tab of the dispatch entry screen flow to the invoice on the mobile client for the first technician who downloads the dispatch.
• Service agreement information is sent to the dispatch tab on the mobile client, allowing your technicians to see the agreement type and all sub-tasks.

Accounting updates: There have also been improvements to the accounting integrations, as well as expanded features and forms.

• You can now modify invoices posted to QuickBooks that no longer exist. This solved the common issue of deleting an invoice in QuickBooks that was posted there by ESC. Now you can easily recover from this mistake by making sure all the transactions that were sent to QuickBooks are deleted.
• There is now the ability to print 1099 forms.
• There is also improved compatibility of the direct deposit setup screens.

If managing your companies files has always been an issue there’s just a few steps needed to completely destroy your file cabinets once and for all:

1. Scan your paper files and customer documents into your computer
2. Attach each file to the appropriate customer in ESC
3. Take your file cabinent to the edge of a cliff
4. Push

Now that you have no file cabinent, continue to manage your company documents and paper work by attaching files to your customer’s records.

ESC gives users the ability to manage documents and images by attaching them to specific customers, dispatches, invoices, etc.

Rather thank bulky customer files ESC lets your office go paper free as well as have better access to documents, images, and files when you need them.

Imagine, when a customer calls, you pull up his record and all the files, photos, and documents associated with that customer’s account is at your finger tips immediately. You will not need to put your customer on hold while you dig through files.

This helps you to create a very professional image for your company. During each customer interaction, you and your dispatchers appear organized and prepared by having at hand all the documents and information you need to help your customers when they call.

The ESC document management also lets you create new document for your customers with the built in word processor. Its functions are similar to Microsoft Word giving it a very low learning curve.

This practice is also very secure. Regular on and off site back ups mean your data and documents are protected.

There are many examples of how this could be put into practice.

First you could have your technicians take before and after pictures of jobs or installations they complete. This is good documentation for handling any disputes. It also provides you with a good record and proof of the quality of work your technicians do.

Another example would be to attach warranty information to your customers’ equipment. Rather than having a bulky file cabinet filled with old warranty cards or instructions, you can have PDFs attached to the equipment in ESC that contains everything you need for that equipment. Then it’s there available for you when and where you need it.

You can also attach PDFs of signed invoices. If your technicians get signed work orders in the field, those can be scanned and attached to the dispatch in the service software, rather than being buried in a file cabinet.

Also, any email correspondence you have with customers can be attached to provide a permanent record of your communications.

By putting this into practice, your company can be incredibly organized, present a professional image, have secure on and off site backups of your company’s documents, and help the environment by going paperless.