How Your Business Can Handle Late Payments With Grace
Just like any company, your business needs to bring in money in order to succeed and continue to improve your business model for years to come. When clients or customers don’t pay and put the success of your company at risk, it can be easy to respond in anger, but that will only hurt your reputation. Instead, you need to put a smart process in place that not only makes it easier to pay bills but also encourages people to make prompt payments. Here at Entrepreneur Funding Experts, we are on a mission to help your company launch, grow, and thrive, so we present some tips for smart payment practices for your business.
Once Payments Are Late
If you notice that a client or customer is late on their payment, then you can politely remind them of the balance due and how they can pay what they owe. A nice way to do this is to send a professional email to the customer a week after the fact and reattach the original bill or invoice so they know exactly how much they owe. In a friendly tone, mention the date that the payment was due and remind them of the forms of payment that you accept.
If the email doesn’t get you a response, then you may consider giving the customer a call. Again, being polite is key during your conversation. Do like you did with the email and remind them of the payment details. If the customer doesn’t answer then leave a voicemail, provide your contact number and let them know that they can contact you with any questions.
Be Proactive With Payments
Business owners are never excited about chasing after customers to try and get their money, so the better solution is to make your payment options as simple as possible so customers have fewer reasons to be late. First, as soon as the services are complete, send out the bill and notate at the bottom when it is due and for how much, along with the forms of payment you accept. Every invoice should be the same. Don’t single out any customers just because you think they may pay late.
You should have many methods of accepting payments and that should include over the phone, on your website, and in person. It is also a good idea to put a payment option on your app. You likely already create appointments and send notices on your app anyway, so it is a smart idea to also set up a payment portal where customers and clients can pay in seconds. With a bank account authentication API, you can instantly authenticate new accounts and connect with any bank for seamless payment delivery.
Incentivize Early Payments
A good way to always get paid on time is to incentivize early payments. Consider setting up a reward system where your clients or customers that consistently pay on time get a perk such as a certain percentage off of their next checkup or a coupon for other services. While you may feel like giving rewards is taking away from your income, the small percentage lost is much easier to take than the headache associated with chasing down late payments.
Of course, you can also eliminate the chance that payment will be late by changing your policy so that all payments are due at the time of service. You can put this information on your website so customers know what is expected. Also, before you perform the services, you can tell the customer what it will cost so they can decide to continue now or come back when they’re ready.
As you can see, there are many tactics that you can use to recoup late payments that don’t involve calling up the collection agency. Try the tips above and stop chasing overdue payments.
