Email billing only

[tiedeman]

I know that a local university here switched over to this about 5 years ago where bills are only sent via email. It's a good idea I feel. Saves on paper, ink, office costs, postage, etc. You can also track it to see when the customer opened the email invoice.

My question is, how many customers would you lose if you make it mandiatory that they receive their bills through email?

And would it be worth it to lose those customers in the long run because you would be saving money?

[Luscious Lawns]

We've been using e-bill (A feature of Quicken) sor several years now. However, we still mainly use snail mail but I like to save the post office hassle. Loose customers over e-bill? I don't think it would be worth that, but it is convient and we try to cut over everyone wiling to accept e-bill.

Allen

[tiedeman]

I use the ebill through Quickbooks and I love it. Right now I only have about 2% of customers that use it. I have been trying to push it more and more to current customers for the past 2 years.

[Davis Lawn Mowing, LLC]

If you have lots of seniors as customers, I figure you might have a problem. I am going to try and do email this year to save on postage as I only bill weekly and bi-weekly, no monthly as I get stiffed WAY too much.

[Fishin LCO]

I bill 99.9% by email. I also only bill at the end of the month because 99.9% of customers are on a year round contract. It has worked really well for me. I do agree with Davis if you have older clients it probably will not work.

CC

[DFW Area Landscaper]

I have been including a little note with all of my snail mail accounts that says if they will send me an e-mail and indicate that they would like to start receiving all future statements by e-mail, I will issue a $10 credit on their next statement. So far, about half of them have accepted.

As for new customers, we only send statements by e-mail. If they require snail mail, it's an extra $2 per month. Otherwise, they can just review their credit card statement. We are charging all new customer's cards the day after we visit.

I'd say about 75% of my customers are on e-mail. Its nice to save the money on envelopes and especially stamps, but the real savings is in time. It takes me forever to print, fold stuff and seal all those envelopes.

Later,
DFW Area Landscpaper

[tiedeman]

I switched over from 21 day billing to a month billing cycle to save a little money and also try to push for the ebill more.

The problem that I think I would run into is the elderly customers. I would say about 60% of my customers are at least 65 or older

[ed2hess]

Email for us also, but old customers no way. They still want you bang on the door and wait until they get to the door....what fustration. Some of them leave checks on the back porch but that was like pulling teeth. Some are finally converted to monthly payment, thank god, so we don't have to go thru the accounting about whether they payed for each mowing. All new OLD customers are asked to bring the money to our house and drop it in our deposit box, if they aren't going to be monthly. Some of them do that. When it comes to method of payment the customer has to be always right...?

[Littleriver1]

I use email about 50/50. It is a great TOOL. Everyone on email? sweet! Just not gona happen. Discount for using email? Stupid. Tell them you have a surcharge for snail mail? Stupid. But that's me.

[mtdman]

Originally Posted by tiedeman

I use the ebill through Quickbooks and I love it. Right now I only have about 2% of customers that use it. I have been trying to push it more and more to current customers for the past 2 years.

I've been trying to push it for quite a while and so far I've got a total of 2 customers that want the bill emailed. Not sure what the problem is, but I'd much rather email them the bill than hassel with the snail mail.