Cleaning Contract. How to charge your client monthly?

[Steve Brian]

Hi we are running a small cleaning business in oxfordshire. and we secured our first office cleaning contract for 12 months cleaning contract. just wanted to ask how to charge your client monthly like a auto payment from the company bank account?

 

[Nico Albrecht]

I am not really sure how you can hammer out a contract and forgot about payment terms not to be included. Now it would be quite late to negotiate for that. For terms it all depends how much Cashflow you have. I would invoice after one month and give 7-14 days payment terms. Repeat it for every month. If they are a bigger cooperation they might want 30-45 day.

 

[Steve Brian]

I am not really sure how you can hammer out a contract and forgot about payment terms not to be included. Now it would be quite late to negotiate for that. For terms it all depends how much Cashflow you have. I would invoice after one month and give 7-14 days payment terms. Repeat it for every month. If they are a bigger cooperation they might want 30-45 day.

i had a meeting with them last friday and 2nd meeting on monday for the final signing of contract and the billing and payment to be included.

 

[WaveJumper]

As above advice. I doubt very much you will get an 'automated' payment set up from your client, in my experience it will invoice and the most important thing for yourself is going to be those payment terms but you could be as again already suggested waiting 30 to 45 days plus even so your cash flow is going to be critical especially if your paying staff

 

[ImranR]

Monthly is the best option for you so try that.

However, it's always worth being considerate and asking the individuals within the firm to explain any hurdles they need to overcome to ensure quick payment.

At a former employer, payments over a certain value needed higher authorisation so whilst handling monthly invoices was more admin, it was less agro as the monthly amounts fell below the relevant threshold (at least this is what they told us!)

 

[Nochexman]

Under the circumstances you should consider invoicing one month in advance.

 

[Alyson Dyer]

We get invoiced monthly and pay by direct debit

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Use accounting software that allows for:

• Automated repeating invoices
• Click to pay (they may use company/other credit card?)

 

[Steve Brian]

We get invoiced monthly and pay by direct debit

Hi Alyson thanks for the comments. just wondering if will set up a derict debit to the client.? -_- ? and if direct debit, my invoices every months is different amount.

 

[Steve Brian]

Use accounting software that allows for:

• Automated repeating invoices
• Click to pay (they may use company/other credit card?)

is there any particular accounting software you know?

 

[mattk]

Is your company set up to collect direct debits? From memory you will need to request payment via BACS - are you doing this for other clients?

I would have thought a more likely process would be you issue an invoice to the client each month for the work done and their Accounts Payable team (or person) makes a one-off payment via Faster Payments according to the payment schedule.

 

[Owesdr]

Frankly, I have never heard that any company is paying cleaning services based on automated payment. However, everything is possible and probably is dependent on your negotiating skills. Eventually, try to set one date in a month for regular payments and send invoice