ElectricalBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Online Payment From the Customer App: Letting Homeowners Pay the Electrician From Their Phone

Most homeowners pay almost every bill they have from their phone. Their power bill, their phone bill, their streaming services. Then the electrician sends a paper invoice with a mailing address and a note that says “checks payable to.” It is not that the customer does not want to pay. It is that paying takes a stamp, a checkbook and a trip to the mailbox.

The Option Between Card on File and Mailed Bills

The previous guide, Auto-Charge on a Schedule: Electrical Billing That Runs Without Anyone Pressing a Button, covered customers who are charged automatically. Not every customer wants that. For those who prefer to see the bill and pay it themselves, the customer app is the answer.

In ElectricalBossPro, every customer can use the customer app to see their invoices and pay online.

What the Customer Sees

When a customer opens the customer app, their invoices are right there. Each invoice shows:

• The services done, each as its own line item at your price.
• The sales tax, applied from your settings.
• The total, and whether it has been paid.

From there the customer pays online. There is no separate payment website to find, no account number to type in, and no call to the office to read a card number out loud.

If the invoice was already paid with the card on file at completion, the customer app shows it as a record of what they paid for. Either way, the customer always has their billing history on their phone.

Everything Else in the Customer App

Paying is one part of the customer app. The same app gives customers a reason to open it regularly, which makes paying feel normal rather than a chore:

• Today's route. On their service day, they see a live map, such as “You're stop 12 of 20 — the crew is 5 stops away.”
• Service requests. They can ask for a new visit without calling.
• Sign-ups. They can sign up for services and pricing, such as a yearly generator maintenance plan.
• Their card. They can update their card when it expires.
• Ratings and referrals. They can rate the visit and refer a neighbor.
• Alerts. They choose night-before, when-they're-next and tech-arrived alerts.

A customer who uses the app to track the tech on Tuesday is already in the app to pay the invoice on Tuesday afternoon.

Why Online Payment Gets You Paid Sooner

Paying a bill is easiest right after the customer sees it. When the invoice and the pay button are in the same place on the same phone, there is no gap between “I should pay that” and actually paying it. A paper bill, on the other hand, waits on the counter until the customer finds time to write a check.

It also removes a step for your office. No checks to deposit, no payments to match by hand, no calls to take card numbers. The payment lands on the invoice it belongs to.

And it works at any hour. A homeowner who remembers the bill at ten at night can pay it at ten at night, instead of waiting until your office opens and hoping they still remember. For a small shop whose office is often the owner's kitchen table, payments that do not need anyone to pick up the phone are a real relief.

Pairing It With Past-Due Follow-Up

When an invoice stays open, ElectricalBossPro's past-due follow-up reminds the customer. Because the customer app is where they pay, the reminder can turn into a payment in a minute or two. That pairing, a reminder plus an easy way to pay, is what keeps the past-due list short. See Past-Due Follow-Up for Electrical Contractors: Collecting Without the Awkward Phone Calls for how that works.

Helping Customers Get Started

Customers will not use the app if they do not know it exists. A few easy ways to introduce it:

• Have the tech mention it at the end of the first visit: “Your invoice will be in the app.”
• Mention it in your appointment reminders.
• Point new sign-ups to it from your website.

The app runs on the phone the customer already has. Once they have opened it once, they will find their invoices there every time.

Paying the Electrician Like Any Other Bill

Online payment from the customer app puts your invoices on the same footing as every other bill your customers pay from their phone. Clear lines, a pay button and their whole history in one place. To see it alongside card on file, charging at completion and monthly statements, visit the ElectricalBossPro electrical invoicing software page.