[shawn]

what do you do with the poeple are 65 and older that are on a fixed income per mounth?

[Nebraska]

what do you do with the poeple are 65 and older that are on a fixed income per mounth?

Run as fast as you can! away!

[shawn]

that is about 5% of my cleints that i had last year for lawn maintance and fertilizer? now i am trying to get new ones. i got a call this morning to do a path walk from the house to the driveway so i went and i got the bid. that is why i asked the question that i did the person is 68 years old. do i ask for all the money up front or half and half?

[Nebraska]

It's really going to depend upon who that person is. Did he tell you that he is on a fixed income? He actually told you that he's 68?

[advanced irr]

Im from Massachusetts , so law here states" deposit can be no more then 1/3 down . As most of my jobs are 1 day I inform customer at time of sale that when job is finished , they will be shown how to use the Irrigation system , then i will be looking for a check, not a week later, not swing by tommorow, but at completion

[4seasons]

just a quick question for Bill's statement "we bill every 3 days". on jobs lasting more than a month do you still do that? that would be awsome but alot of check writing .


Bruce

[Bill Schwab]

Especially in jobs over one month. Several reasons for that but here are the main two.
1, cash flow, better to have more than less. 2, if the job for whatever reason goes sour, or there is a dispute, would you rather have someone hold 5% of what has been done, or 25%? Bille arly and often.

[Paverman]

In maryland, you can only get a deposit of 1/3 at contract signing. We break the rest of the balance into a payment when the job starts and the balance when the job is done but I really like Bills post about getting progress payments and have decided we're going to implement that for 2006.

Thanks Bill, good tip.

Nick

[pineapple]

We get 1/2 at signing and 1/2 on completion. We send a bill with any adjustments/credits on completion and it is due in 10 days.

The contract says it is due upon completion, so they know it is coming.

[Bill Schwab]

Pineapple:

If doing 1/2 and 1/2 works for you great, but you realize by doing business that way you allowed someone to work with your money without charging them for using it? There is something about human nature that when they choose to hold payment, they don't think about holding parts, they hold what is owed and then there is the problem of justifying why they should give you a partial release.

By billing every few days, making the payment due on reciept of invoice, you are up to date for every phase of your project as it is completed.

It is illegal in our state to be paid for any work or product that has not been recieved. When we worked in Illinois, we used to bill 1/3 1/3 1/3 and could get away with that. Moving here shed some light on a few things that needed to be tightened up in our operation, so, when we set the jobup in QB, we set up phases along the way with profit and overhead recovery in each phase. I hate to think about the screwability factor, because in general I think all people are good. Having been screwed out of 20K with little to no recourse at the time prompted me to implement the change, and overviewing everything about the way we bill, in all honesty, it is fairest for all parties, not just one side.

Food for thought anyhow.