ElectricalBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Getting Electrical Invoices in Front of Customers by Email, Text and the Customer App

An invoice the customer never sees is an invoice that never gets paid. It sounds obvious, but a surprising share of late electrical bills are late simply because the customer did not notice them. The paper bill went under a pile of mail, the email went to an old address, or the bill went to the spouse who was not home for the visit. Getting the invoice in front of the right person is half of getting paid.

The Numbers Start With Delivery

The previous guide, Billing Reports for Electrical Contractors: What Is Paid, What Is Owed and What Came In, covered seeing what is still owed. A lot of what shows up on the open list is there because the invoice never reached anyone. This guide is about fixing that at the source.

ElectricalBossPro uses three channels together: the customer app, email and text.

The Customer App: Where Invoices Live

Every invoice is in the customer app. The customer opens it on their phone and sees their invoices with every line item and the sales tax, and they can pay online right there. Customers with a card on file who were charged at completion see the invoice as their record of what they paid.

The customer app is also where they track the crew on a live map, request service, sign up for plans like yearly generator maintenance, update their card, rate the visit and refer a friend. Because there are other reasons to open it, customers get used to it, and paying an invoice there feels normal.

Email: The Paper Trail Customers Expect

Many customers, and almost every commercial account, still expect billing by email. Automated emails in ElectricalBossPro keep customers informed without anyone in the office composing a message for every job. For a property manager on a Monthly account, an email is often how their bookkeeper keeps the statement on file.

Keep the email address on each client current. A customer who changed jobs or switched email providers since their last service call is a customer who will not see the bill.

Text: The Channel People Actually Read

Most people read their texts. ElectricalBossPro sends automated reminders and alerts by text, and the office can text customers directly with two-way texting. A short text is often the fastest way to let a customer know something needs their attention, and it is the easiest way for them to reply with a question.

Customers also choose their own alerts for visits: the night before, when they are next on the route, and when the tech arrives. Those texts keep the customer engaged with your shop on the day of the work, which is also the day the invoice is created.

The Text Allowance

Every plan includes a monthly text allowance: 500 segments on Start, 1,000 on Pro and 2,000 on Crew, counting texts sent and received. For most small shops, that covers the reminders, alerts and back-and-forth that keep billing moving. Texting works for customers in the US and Canada.

Reaching the Right Person

The invoice should go to whoever pays it. A few habits help:

• Confirm contact details on the first visit. The tech or the office can check the best email and phone number.
• Know who pays. For a rental, that may be the landlord or property manager, not the tenant who let the tech in.
• Use Monthly for multi-address customers. One statement with every address labeled is far easier to route inside a business than many separate invoices.
• Point new customers to the customer app. Once they have opened it, they know where their invoices will be.

Delivery Plus an Easy Way to Pay

Delivering the invoice is only useful if paying it is easy. That is why the channels all point back to the customer app, where the pay button sits next to the invoice. A text or email that leads to a phone number and a mailing address is a dead end. A reminder that leads to a pay button gets paid. That pairing is also what makes past-due follow-up work, as covered in Past-Due Follow-Up for Electrical Contractors: Collecting Without the Awkward Phone Calls.

Invoices Customers Actually See

Getting invoices in front of customers comes down to using the channels they already use: their phone, their email and their texts. ElectricalBossPro puts every invoice in the customer app, sends automated reminders and alerts by text and email, and gives the office two-way texting for everything else. To see how invoice delivery fits with payment and follow-up, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrical invoicing software page.