Financials and budgeting

How to take the pain out of getting paid with online payment options

Learn how construction software can help keep your cash flow flowing

Take pain out of getting paid

When it comes to completing construction projects, your team’s hard work should instantly become cold hard cash. Unfortunately, this process is rarely instant. Because collecting payments from clients isn’t as easy as them forking over a few dollar bills.

There’s invoicing. Hunting clients down for checks … or, worse, relying on snail mail. Delivering that check to the bank days later. It’s wait, wait and then wait some more.

With construction software, you can leave this slow-as-molasses method in the past. The future of payment options is tech. Buildertrend can be your one place to pay and get paid.

With Buildertrend Payment Processing, collecting on projects is quick, easy and secure – for you and your clients. Right from our construction software, you can track projects, invoice homeowners and even pay subcontractors. All from the palm of your hand.

When it comes to payment options, this is the real deal. To further learn how Payment Processing helps you get a grip on your finances, we talked to Trevor Pillen, an associate product manager with Buildertrend.

Q: What are the biggest struggles construction owners experience in regard to payments?

Waiting is the biggest struggle. That’s waiting around for checks and the amount of time it takes to deposit them, writing checks to subs, recording those payments and reconciling their books – a lot of times done in one day. We often hear that Friday is the “money day” where owners cut checks to subs, run around town collecting payments and call clients reminding them they need to pay.

To complicate matters, this all has to be done before 5 p.m. because contractors have to stop at the bank.

Q: Sounds like the industry is ripe for change. Why should businesses make the switch to online payments?

This feature saves you time, gets you paid faster and keeps everything inclusive within Buildertrend. Setup is simple and takes just minutes – then you can start accepting payments right away.

Plus, there’s no hard inquiry on your credit report. Not to mention no additional monthly cost, no setup fees, no app fees, no contracts. Period.

Q: What are the benefits of online payments for a contractor’s clients and subs?

For clients, it allows them to pay how they want. It’s a rare thing in today’s world where the only payment method is cash or check. Having flexible payment options allows your customers to pay how they want and ultimately gets your team paid faster. It’s just much more seamless.

At Buildertrend, we know you don’t necessarily want your clients putting large sums on their credit cards and would rather have them use an ACH payment. That’s why we allow you to set limits on how much a customer can charge to their credit cards on a global level or down to specific jobs. It’s nice having full control on how you want to get paid.

Ready to level up your construction billing process?

As for subcontractors, it’s simple. No more checks and electronic Lien Waivers. Your subs will love the convenience of not waiting around for a check in the mail or having to come to the office to collect. I’ve had hundreds of conversations with builders who would love to eliminate that process completely but didn’t have an alternative until we showed them how to do this in Buildertrend.

Once your subcontractor takes the five minutes to fill out their information to get paid, all you need to do is make a payment on a bill or purchase order in Buildertrend. Just like that, the money is on the way.  If you chose to attach a lien waiver to the payment, the money won’t be released until the sub signs it. Better yet, you can start paying your subs right away through Buildertrend even if they are currently inactive.  When you make the payment, it’ll ask your sub to set up their Buildertrend account and online payment account at once.

Q: Sounds simple for all parties. So, Payment Processing integrates with other Buildertrend tools?

This feature works with several different features within our construction software: Proposals, Invoicing, Change Orders, Construction Billing and Purchase Orders. Not only does it work with those features, it also integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks and Xero to help alleviate double entry.

Q: Alright, so if a contractor wants to get started, what’s next?

It takes less than five minutes to set up and you can start getting paid right away via ACH, debit card or credit cards once you are. To get started, I would tell Buildertrend customers to reach out to their account executive or visit the Payment Processing marketplace web page.

A couple of things to preface: The Payment Processing feature is only available in the U.S. and Canada. Additionally, ACH is not available as a payment option in Canada – but credit cards are accepted. It’s also important to note that our processing fees are much lower than others.

Q: We started talking about struggles with payments. Let’s end talking the successes construction companies see after switching over to Buildertrend Payment Processing

Hands down, the biggest successes are shorter turnaround time on payments and how it impacts their cash flow in a positive manner.

I read an article last year stating that the average time it takes for a client to pay after they receive an invoice asking for a check is around 42 days. With electronic payments, it cuts that time down, even more so if you offer credit cards and not limit your clients to just ACH.

Bottom line: Your customers want flexible payment options, and you have the opportunity to offer this with no hassle.

About The Author

Sean Robinson

Sean Robinson Sean Robinson is a senior content marketing specialist at Buildertrend

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