How do you collect money from a customer when your employee goes out and does the job?
Are they supposed to collect the money?
Or do you get it directly from the customer?
That's an excellent question and we're going to cover that today.
Hi there, I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask A House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now today's show is brought to us by SavvyPerks.com, which is an employee program, a perks program
to inspire and motivate your employees to be loyal and to help you grow your business.
So you give them something, they come back and they give you their greatest attention
to detail and effort and energy and they show up on time and all of these things.
So SavvyPerks.com (Available to you too.)
All right, on to today's question, which is from a house cleaner who has this question.
Hi Angela, I'm thinking about starting a house cleaning business I have so many questions.
I know this is going to be in the future but my question is, as my business grows and I
hire employees, how should I handle the payment exchange?
For instance when my employee's going to clean the house, the houses, should they take the
payment and give them to me?
Or should the customer's make the payment directly to me?
I would like to know.
Thank you.
Angela Brown: Alrighty, so that's a fair question.
How do you collect the money from a customer if your employee does the job?
Now it used to be back in the olden days before we accepted credit cards, that we would have
a little box on the side of our house or on the side of our office where customers would
come by and they would drop their money in or suggestions, or complaints and that would
give us the money that we needed to turn around and pay our employees.
There are house cleaners who just have the employees bring the money back, but there
are also employees who have taken the money and have just skipped town, never to be seen
or heard of again.
So, you don't want to get in a situation where you're fighting with the customer and the
employee about the money that's received, because a lot of house cleaners will look
at the money and they assume,
"Oh my boss is making all this extra money and I'm the one that did all the work."
and that makes them angry and that makes them upset, because they
don't recognize the fact that running a business includes bonding and insurance,
and cleaning supplies, and vehicle expenses, and gasoline for the car and uniforms,
and a whole bunch of other things that are required for running a business.
And so they just assume that I did all the work, I should make all the money.
And receiving a payment from the customer is one of the biggest reason why employees
leave the company and go out and start their own house cleaning businesses.
They don't understand that they are a cost of the business and so part of the money that
is earned yes, pays their salaries but the rest of the money pays everything else.
Okay so, how do you get the money?
We are now in an era, yay!
Of credit cards, and so people get to use their credit cards
in exchange for rewards points.
And so I encourage customers to use their credit cards to pay because that way they
can save up their points and apply those for frequent flyer points on their next vacation,
or they can buy something nice from the rewards company that is offered through their credit card.
So you want to have a credit card on file and that way all you're doing is sending a
text to the customer, "Hey Mrs. Jones, just want to give you heads up, I've got Caroline
coming over to your house tomorrow morning from 10 until 2, the payment for the house
tomorrow is going to be $220," or whatever the payment is,
"I'll run it on your credit card, if I don't hear anything from you.
If I hear something from you and there's a compliant
or a concern or you have some of kind of an issue, please let me know and we'll resolve
it immediately."
All right, so what you've done is you've confirmed the appointment, you let her know how much
it was, you let her know that Caroline is the one that's coming and you let her know
also, hey we have a satisfaction guarantee, I want you to be satisfied.
If you're not, let me know, okay?
So before she jumps on social media, she starts making bad reviews or she doesn't pay you
or withholds payment, or whatever, she just had some kind of a little reminder from you
yesterday, hey everything's good and kind.
So you just want to keep it super simple, collect the money upfront and my suggestion
is don't run the credit card until after the cleaning is done.
If you hear something back from her that afternoon or that evening, you've already run the credit
card that evening and so you can erase it before it actually processes usually at midnight.
And if that doesn't happen and everything is good and kind, then the money processes
at midnight as normal.
So instead of you collecting the money upfront and running the credit card and charging all
these ... Just let it go, let Caroline go do the job, Caroline comes back and gives
you a report, says everything went smoothly, that's all she needs to know.
She doesn't need to know how much the customer paid, she doesn't need to know where the checks
came from or whatever, who writes checks anymore?
I mean, some people still do but for the most part, everybody now pays in credit card.
That's just the new norm, and it can be a bank card, it can be a debit card, it can
be a company card, it can be a gift card someone gave them.
It doesn't matter as long as it processes through your credit card system.
It doesn't matter.
So, a lot of people pay with credit cards cause it's really easier for everyone, and
it's easier for you as the boss and it keeps your employee just focused on their job.
Not focused on what you as the business owner are making and how much more your making then
them, the object is to keep your employees happy and to keep them focused on their job,
and you can do that with the employee perks program through Savvy Perks.
Alrighty, that's my two cents for today and until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner
place then when you found it.
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