Getting paid on site, before you leave

Ask a trade business where its cashflow problem is and the answer is usually customers. The dates usually show a fortnight between the job finishing and the invoice leaving.

That fortnight is not a customer problem. It is the gap between the work ending and somebody at a desk reaching the paperwork. Every day in it is a day nobody asked for the money.

Three gaps, not one

1. Done to invoiced. The job finished on Tuesday and the invoice went out a week on Friday.
2. Invoiced to paid. The customer has it, and now you are waiting on their habits.
3. Paid to noticed. The money arrived and nobody reconciled it, so you chased somebody who had already paid.

The second gap gets all the attention, because it feels like somebody else's fault. The first is bigger in most trade businesses and is entirely yours, which also makes it the one you can fix this week.

Close the first gap by moving the invoice to the van

The invoice belongs where the job ends, on the phone, with the person who did the work. Not because a phone types better, but because the details are only complete at that moment. The work actually done, the parts actually used, and whatever extra the customer requested.

An invoice written on Friday from a job sheet is a reconstruction. It is missing the second powerpoint and the extra hour, and those go unbilled, which is a different leak in the same pipe.

Then take the money while you are still there

Once the invoice exists on the phone, the shortest possible version of the second gap is zero: the customer pays before you drive away.

In the Diract phone app, open the invoice and tap Tap to Pay on iPhone, or Tap to Pay on Android, beside Record payment. It takes whatever the invoice still shows outstanding. Hand the customer the phone or hold it out, and they tap their card or their own phone against the top of it.

No terminal, no second device, no card reader to charge and lose. The money goes to your own Stripe account. The invoice records the payment as Card, with the reference Paid by Tap to Pay, so it reconciles itself before you reach the van.

That last part closes the third gap as well. The payment and the invoice were never separate records that somebody had to match up later.

What to set up first

Card payments have to exist before any of this shows. An admin clicks Admin, then Billing, and Set up card payments under Getting paid, fills in the form and continues to Stripe. Until that is done, a customer sees only your How to pay details.

On the phone, allow location access the first time, because Stripe needs it to take a card in person. On an iPhone, whoever set up card payments accepts Apple's Tap to Pay terms once. The first payment on a given phone takes a few seconds longer while it gets ready. Worth knowing, before a customer watches you wonder whether it has frozen.

Finalise the invoice and save any changes before taking payment. And a phone losing signal after the charge goes through still records the payment the moment Stripe confirms it. A dead spot behind a property loses nothing.

When you cannot be paid on the spot

Plenty of work is not paid on the day: builder contracts, commercial accounts, anything on terms. Those need the other route, which is a payment link the customer opens.

Share link finalises the invoice and copies a link that needs no account at the customer's end. Their page shows the lines, what has been paid, the Amount due, a Download PDF and a button such as Pay $230.00 by card. The box tells you Not opened yet until they open it, which is a quietly useful thing to know before you ring to chase.

The reminders get set once, and the chasing by hand stops. Invoice settings on the Invoices list takes Remind before due (days) and Remind when overdue by (days). Reminders stop on their own once the invoice is paid or voided.

The job moves with the invoice

An invoice raised from a job moves the job along by itself. Once it finalises, the job's status becomes Invoiced, carrying its invoice date and payment due date. Once nothing remains outstanding it becomes Paid. A payment removed sends the job back to Invoiced.

That is what makes "done, not invoiced" a number you can put on a screen rather than a feeling. It is the quietest leak in any trade business, and it is only visible when the job and the invoice are the same thread. Job tracking for a trade business covers the rest of that thread, and trade invoicing and cashflow covers the money side.

The change worth making first

• Card payments get set up once, so every route to the money stays open
• The invoice goes out at the job, from the phone, while the detail is still visible
• Ask for payment on the spot for domestic work. Most people pay when somebody asks, and almost nobody asks
• The link and the automatic reminders cover anybody on terms
• Dollars not yet invoiced belong on a screen somebody reads daily