PestBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Billing Quarterly Pest Control Plans Without Chasing Checks

The quarterly plan is the heart of most residential pest control companies. It is steady, predictable work, and it should be steady, predictable money. When it is billed by mailing an invoice and waiting for a check, it is neither.

Plans Are Where the Money Repeats

The mechanics of charging a card after each visit are in Auto-Charging After Each Pest Control Service. This article puts that to work on the plan most companies sell more than any other.

A quarterly customer at $125 a visit is a few hundred dollars a year from one driveway, year after year, as long as the service is good and the billing is painless. Painless billing is the part owners tend to underrate. A late visit is easy to forgive. A confusing bill, a double charge or a charge for a visit the customer never saw is what makes people start shopping around.

Visits Come Due, Invoices Follow

In PestBossPro, recurring plans are set by the minimum days between visits: 90 for quarterly, 60 for bi-monthly, 30 for monthly. When a customer comes due, they show on the Waiting List, a live map and list with pins colored by status: not due yet, due now, and overdue past a seven-day grace. The office circles an area on the map, builds a route and schedules it.

Billing follows the visit. When the tech taps Complete, the invoice is created for the plan service at the plan price, and the card on file can be charged. There is no separate step where someone remembers that the Hendersons are due for their quarterly bill. If the visit happened, the bill happened.

The same works for bi-monthly and monthly plans. A monthly plan at a lower price per visit bills twelve times a year; a bi-monthly plan bills six. The billing setup does not change, only the interval.

Initial Service on the First Visit

Most quarterly plans start with an initial service: a heavier first treatment, inside and out, priced higher than the regular visit. That first invoice should show the initial service as its own line, like “Initial Pest Control Service — $199,” so the customer understands why the first charge is higher than the quarterly price they were quoted. The next visit then bills at the regular plan price. The first invoice gets its own article: Billing the Initial Pest Control Service: The First Invoice on a New Account.

Between Quarters: Re-Services

Quarterly plans usually come with a promise: if pests come back between visits, the tech comes back at no charge. That promise is part of what customers are paying for, so it has to show up correctly on the billing side. A re-service should be scheduled as a visit on the account with no charge. It goes on the record, the tech sees the history, and the customer does not get a bill. See Re-Service Visits at No Charge: How to Invoice a Pest Control Callback.

When a Quarter Gets Skipped

Life happens. A customer travels, a gate is locked, it rains for a week. If the tech taps Skip, there is no invoice and no charge for that visit. The account is still due, so it stays on the Waiting List until it is completed. When the visit does happen, it bills then.

If you charge quarterly plans on a schedule instead of at completion, skipped visits need more attention. A customer charged for a quarter that never got serviced will notice. Look over skipped and overdue accounts during your month-end review and settle anything charged without a visit behind it.

Price Changes on Recurring Plans

Every few years you will raise plan prices. Your costs for product, fuel and labor go up, and the plan price has to follow. When it does:

• Tell customers ahead of time by email or text, with the new price and the date it starts.
• Update the price on your service list so new invoices use it.
• Keep the wording on the invoice the same, so the only change the customer sees is the number they were warned about.

A price change with notice is a business decision. A price change without notice is a complaint.

Quarterly Plans That Bill Themselves

The goal for a quarterly plan is simple: the customer comes due, gets scheduled, gets serviced, and gets charged, with the office touching nothing unless something goes wrong. Visits that come due on their own, invoices at completion and a card on file get you there. For the rest of PestBossPro's billing tools, visit the pest control invoicing software page.