There are two parts involved in mowing a lawn. The first part is getting the job done in a tidy and timely manner. The second part is getting paid on time.
You cannot leave that sort of thing to the whims of the customer.
You need to be hard and fast with your rules about getting paid.
If you let your debtors run with no restrictions, they will inevitably take advantage of your generosity and you will start developing cash flow problems.
It is a given that all businesses must extend credit. The question is how much is too much credit? Are you tracking how much your lawn-mowing customers owe you?
You Should!
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My rule of thumb is that they should never owe us more than a week’s worth of income. That means if we are mowing 2k worth of lawns a week, then the amount our customers owe should not exceed this amount.
Sounds great in theory, you may say. But how do you achieve this?
The simple answer is to invoice less and text more.
What do I mean by this?
We do not issue invoices unless we are working with a business. We issue invoices on the first of the month.
Before you say “My customers won’t wear that” I want you to know that most businesses will accept those terms. We have everything from kindergartens to supermarkets that pay us on a seven-day invoice.
Everyone else we text on the same day we mow asking for payment within 24 hours. We send reminder texts every 3 days and this helps people get into the habit of paying quickly.
We do this from day one and our customers see it as the way we do business.
We turn up on time, do a great job, and expect prompt payment.
Sounds fair to me.
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