TreeBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Online Payments in the Customer App: Letting Tree Customers Pay From Their Phone

Ask a customer to mail a check and you are asking them to find the checkbook, find a stamp and find the envelope. Ask them to tap a link and pay from their phone and the invoice is gone before dinner. Online payment is the single easiest way to shorten the time between a finished job and money in the bank.

Why Online Payment Matters

In Auto-Billing Tree Service Customers: When It Works and When It Doesn't we talked about jobs where the customer should see the invoice before paying. Online payment is how those customers pay without friction.

Most customers who pay late are not refusing to pay. They are busy, they forgot or the invoice got buried. Removing every step between seeing the invoice and paying it turns a lot of late payments into same-day payments.

There is also an expectation problem. Customers now pay for nearly everything from their phones. A tree company that only takes checks feels behind, even if the work is excellent. Online payment matches how customers already live, which makes paying you feel normal instead of like a chore.

What the Customer App Shows

TreeBossPro includes a customer app and portal. When a customer logs in, they see:

• Their visits, past and upcoming
• Their invoices, paid and open
• A way to pay open invoices online
• Their card on file, which they can add or update
• On service day, a live crew map so they know when the crew is coming
• Their choices for which alerts they want to receive

For billing, the important part is that the invoice, the payment button and the history are all in one place. A customer can check what they were charged for last spring and pay this month's invoice in the same visit.

The live crew map on service day is not a billing feature, but it helps billing anyway. Customers who watched the crew arrive and saw the job happen have no doubt about what the invoice is for. The whole experience, from alert to visit to invoice, feels connected.

Fewer Billing Calls to the Office

A lot of office phone time goes to questions like: Did I pay that? What was that charge for? Can you resend the invoice? When customers can answer those themselves, the calls drop.

That is especially true for PHC customers with several treatments a year and property managers with several properties. They need a running record, and the customer app gives them one without the office building a statement by hand.

Two-way texting covers the questions the app does not. If a customer replies to an invoice text with a question about a line, the office can answer it in the same thread, and the customer can pay from the same link moments later.

Getting Customers Into the App

Customers will not use an app they do not know about. Mention it at the estimate: You will be able to see your visits and pay invoices online in our customer app. Mention it again in the invoice text or email. Crews can point to it when they finish: Your invoice will be in the app.

Automated customer texts and emails can send invoices with a link to pay, so even customers who never open the app can still pay online in a couple of taps.

Some customers will still prefer to call or mail a check. That is fine. The goal is not to force anyone online, but to make online payment so easy that most customers choose it on their own.

Online Payment Plus Follow-Ups

Online payment works best when it is paired with automatic follow-ups. If the invoice is still open after a few days, a reminder goes out by text or email with the same link to pay. The customer taps and pays. Nobody in the office has to make a call.

For customers who would rather not deal with invoices at all, the app is also where they can add a card on file. Once it is there, future invoices can be auto-billed, and the customer app becomes a record rather than a to-do list.

Look at which invoices still get paid by check after a few months. If they are mostly from a handful of long-time customers, a friendly mention of the customer app during their next visit may be all it takes to move them over.

Making Online Payment the Default

The goal is simple: make online payment the expected way to pay. Put it in your estimates, invoices and conversations. Keep checks as an option for customers who insist, but do not make them the default.

Pay attention to the customers who do not pay online after the first invoice. A quick, friendly message explaining how the customer app works often converts them. Once they have paid online once, they usually keep doing it.

Within a season, most customers will pay online or by card on file, and the office spends its time on the few that need attention. To see the customer app, online payment and invoicing working together, take a look at online payments in TreeBossPro tree service billing software.