PestBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Moving Pest Control Billing Off Paper Service Tickets

Plenty of pest control companies still run on paper. The tech fills out a carbon service ticket at each stop, hands a copy to the customer or leaves it in the door, and brings the stack back to the shop. Someone types the tickets into invoices, and someone else types them into a spreadsheet for the application records. It works, until the company grows past the point where one person can keep up.

Why Paper Billing Breaks

Paper tickets are one reason disputes are hard to settle, as covered in Handling Pest Control Invoice Disputes With Photos and Service Records. A carbon copy is weak evidence next to visit times, an arrived text and photos. But disputes are only one problem with paper billing.

Paper creates delay: work done Tuesday is invoiced Friday or the next week. It creates loss: tickets fall between the seats, get rained on or get filed in the wrong folder. It creates double entry: the same visit is written once by the tech and typed twice by the office, once for billing and once for records. And it depends on one person who knows how the system works, which is a problem the week that person is out.

Step 1: Get Your Clients In

Start with your customer list, wherever it lives today: a spreadsheet, an old program, a box of index cards. PestBossPro has CSV import, and imported addresses are placed on the map automatically. Bring in names, addresses, phone numbers and emails. Clean the list while you are at it: merge duplicates, fix addresses and drop customers who left years ago.

One client can have many addresses, so a property manager with eleven rentals is one client with eleven properties, not eleven clients. Tags and custom fields hold the details you used to keep on the index card.

Step 2: Set Up Services and Plans

Write your service list: initial service, quarterly, bi-monthly and monthly plans, mosquito, rodent program, termite inspection, WDI inspection, one-time jobs like ants, wasps and bed bug inspections, and commercial monthly service. Give each a plain name, a price and tax settings from your accountant. Every invoice from now on comes from this list.

Then put each recurring customer on their plan with the right interval: 90, 60 or 30 days. Check that each one comes due on the Waiting List when your paper records say it should. Set commercial accounts that want one bill to Monthly.

Step 3: Collect Cards on File

Paper companies usually have a lot of customers paying by mailed check. Moving them to a card on file is the step that changes cash flow most. Do it gradually:

• Send every customer a note about the change, with a pointer to the customer app where they can put a card on file, see invoices and pay online.
• Ask each customer at their next visit, or have the tech leave a card with instructions.
• Make card on file the standard for every new recurring customer from day one.

Some long-time customers will keep paying by check, and that is fine. They can pay their invoices however suits them; the goal is that most accounts bill themselves. The case for asking early is in Card on File at Sign-Up: Starting Every Pest Control Account With a Payment Method.

Step 4: Switch the Techs

The tech app runs in the browser on iPhone and Android, with no app store download. Techs log in with the company login and a personal PIN, see their stops in route order, and tap Start, Skip or Complete. When they tap Complete, the invoice is created and the card on file can be charged, and they record what was applied for the chemical application record at the same time. One tap replaces the carbon ticket, the office typing and the spreadsheet.

Train each tech on one ride-along. The billing part is the easiest bit to learn: they finish the job, record what was applied and tap Complete. The office handles everything else.

Step 5: Run Both for a Short While

For the first week or two, some owners have techs keep a paper ticket as a backup while they get used to the phone. That is reasonable, but set an end date. Running two systems for months doubles the work you were trying to cut. At the end of the first month, do a month-end billing review and compare it to a typical paper month.

Off Paper for Good

Moving billing off paper is mostly setup: import clients, write the service list, put customers on plans, collect cards and train techs on Complete. Once that is done, the invoice happens with the work, and the Sunday-night ticket pile is gone. For the rest of PestBossPro's billing tools, visit the pest control invoicing software page.