TrashCanBossPro Blog — Billing & Payments

Prepay Options for Trash Can Cleaning: Setting a Policy You Can Actually Run

Some customers would rather pay for the whole season or the whole year at once and never think about it again. Prepay can be good for you too: cash up front, fewer charges, fewer declines. But a prepay offer without clear rules becomes a bookkeeping headache by the third month.

Prepay Is a Business Decision First

Following up on late invoices, which is covered in Past-Due Follow-Up for Trash Can Cleaning Invoices Without the Awkward Calls, is the opposite end of the same problem. Prepay is one way to make sure you never chase a customer at all.

Before you offer it, decide whether you want it. Prepay makes sense if you want cash early in the season for equipment or marketing, or if you have customers asking for it. It makes less sense if you are still changing prices or still figuring out your routes, because a prepaid customer is locked into whatever you promised.

What a Prepay Policy Needs to Answer

Write down the answers to these questions before the first prepaid customer:

• What exactly is prepaid? A number of cleanings, or a period of time? "12 monthly cleanings" is clearer than "one year."
• Is there a discount? Many companies give a small discount for paying up front. Decide whether yours is a percentage or a free cleaning.
• What happens to missed cleanings? If the cans are not out, does that count as a used cleaning?
• Can the customer cancel? If so, how is the refund figured?
• What about add-ons? Are deodorizing and pad washes included, or billed separately?
• What if they move? Can the plan transfer to the new address or the new owner?

Put those answers on your website and in the customer's sign-up confirmation. A policy nobody has read is not a policy.

Keep the Math Simple

The cleanest prepay offers are count-based. "Prepay for 12 cleanings and get 1 free." The customer knows what they bought, you know what you owe, and cancellations are easy: refund the unused cleanings at the price they paid per cleaning.

Time-based offers, like "a year of every-other-week service," are harder. Months have different numbers of trash days, holidays move pickups, and a customer who cancels in month seven needs a calculation instead of a count.

Recording Prepay in Your Billing

However you take the payment, the work still needs to be recorded visit by visit. In TrashCanBossPro, each cleaning is completed in the tech app and shows on the job history, so you always know how many cleanings a customer has actually received. Keep a note or tag on the client that says they are prepaid and how many cleanings were bought, so nobody in the office charges their card on top of the prepayment.

Tags make prepaid customers easy to pull up as a group. For more on using tags for billing groups, read Organizing Billing With Tags: Monthly, Every-Other-Week, HOA and Commercial Accounts.

Talk to your accountant about how prepaid money should be recorded on your books. Money collected for cleanings you have not done yet is usually treated differently from money for cleanings you already did.

Offer It at the Right Time

Prepay sells best at two moments: when a customer first signs up and is excited about the service, and at the start of your busy season when customers are thinking about summer smells. A short text in early spring to your existing customers can bring in a good chunk of cash before the heavy months.

Do not push prepay on everyone. Customers who prefer to pay per visit with a card on file are already easy to bill. Prepay is an option, not a requirement.

Watch Out for Price Changes

If you raise prices next year, prepaid customers keep the price they paid until their cleanings are used up. That is fair and expected. Just make sure your prepay offer does not run so long that you end up cleaning cans at last year's price for eighteen months. Twelve cleanings or one season is a reasonable cap.

When the prepaid cleanings run out, reach out a few weeks early. A short text asking whether they want to prepay again or switch to a card on file keeps the customer on the route without a gap.

Start small. Offer prepay to a handful of loyal customers first and run it for a season. If the bookkeeping stays simple and customers like it, open it up to everyone the following year.

The Short Version

Decide whether prepay fits your business, write a clear policy, make it count-based, tag prepaid customers so they are never double-charged, and check the accounting with your accountant. For more billing guides, go back to the trash can cleaning billing software page.