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You wouldn’t accept a 10% tax on revenue, but you’re absorbing the same cost (or more) every month just by waiting to get paid.
You’re delivering work today, funding payroll this week—while your cash sits in someone else’s account for another 45 days.
This guide isn’t just a checklist.
It’s a mindset shift.
A 30-day plan to take back control of your business—not by selling more, but by finally collecting what you’ve already earned.
The most common payment inefficiencies that hurt service businesses.
How to reduce late payments and improve cash flow.
The best payment optimization strategies for your industry.
A step-by-step action plan to transform your payment process.
We’ve spent the last few years helping hundreds of service companies—agencies, home services, construction firms, consultants—streamline how they get paid.
And what we’ve learned is this:
Most CEOs don’t realize how much time, money, and mental energy they’re losing in the way they get paid.
They’re building strong companies—growing revenue, delivering great work—but behind the scenes, their payment systems are a mess:
Invoices sent late (or not at all)
Payments delayed for 30, 60, even 90 days
Admin teams drowning in manual work
High fees quietly draining profits
No visibility into what’s actually coming in
And fixing it doesn’t require a new accounting degree or another SaaS tool.
It starts with understanding how your business really operates when it comes to getting paid—and then making a few high-leverage changes.
Automating invoice generation to ensure timely billing.
Reducing payment delays with better payment terms and options.
Integrating seamless payment solutions that minimize friction.
Tracking and analyzing cash flow to prevent revenue leakage.
Eliminating unnecessary payment fees that eat into your profits.
We’re the team behind DepositFix, the only payment platform purpose-built for service businesses that run on CRMs—not spreadsheets.
We’ve helped 7- and 8-figure businesses reduce their Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) by up to 40%, recover thousands in stuck cash, and eliminate hours of admin work every week.
But this guide isn’t about our software.
It’s about giving you a clear path forward—whether you do it on your own or bring us in to help.
You don’t need more sales to grow your revenue.
You need to fix how your business gets paid.
Most service companies are leaking thousands per month without realizing it—through payment delays, manual work, and broken systems that rely on people remembering what to do.
This isn’t a tech overhaul. It’s a cash flow shift—and it starts in the next 30 days.
This guide gives you a practical, CEO-friendly roadmap to:
Find hidden cash already earned but uncollected
Eliminate payment bottlenecks
Free up your team from repetitive tasks
Create the foundation of a scalable, payment-optimized business
Payment optimization is a strategic concept that refers to improving every aspect of how a business gets paid—so money comes in faster, with less friction, and at a lower cost. Here’s what payment optimization typically includes:
Interchange optimization: qualifying for lower interchange rates by passing additional data (especially for B2B).
Card type routing: choosing cost-effective rails (e.g., routing to debit vs. credit).
Surcharging / Dual Pricing: passing fees to the customer when allowed by law.
ACH or bank transfer adoption: encouraging lower-cost payment methods.
Automated invoicing: ensuring invoices go out immediately without human delay.
Auto-reminders & dunning: consistent, automated follow-ups reduce time to payment.
Card-on-file billing: eliminates waiting for customers to take action.
Deposit/partial payments: collect revenue earlier in the sales process.
CRM integration: invoices auto-generated from deals or jobs.
QuickBooks sync: automating reconciliation and reporting.
Consolidated tools: replacing 3+ apps (CRM + billing + payments) with one streamlined system.
Modern pay-by-link emails: frictionless experience across devices.
Embedded payments in proposals or portals: making it easy for clients to pay within their workflow.
Wallet support: Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc.
Tokenization and stored cards: safer than collecting credit card data repeatedly.
Approval workflows: ensure clients sign off before billing.
Better recordkeeping: integrated data helps in chargeback disputes.
Cash flow forecasting: understanding when payments are coming in.
AR aging reports & dashboards: identifying bottlenecks before they become a problem.
Uncover the cash and time you're losing every month
Before you fix anything, you need to see where the money’s bleeding out.
Checklist:
Pull your AR aging report
Total your 30+/60+/90+ day unpaid invoices
Calculate your DSO (Days Sales Outstanding)
List your payment methods and estimate your blended fee rate
Estimate how many hours/month your team spends on invoicing, chasing, reconciling
Bonus Insight:
Most service businesses are unknowingly acting like a bank—delivering services while waiting 30–60 days to collect.
You wouldn’t accept a 3% tax on revenue, but slow payments do exactly that.
Accelerate what’s already owed to you
This isn’t about asking for more. It’s about collecting what you’ve already earned—faster.
Pick 1–2 cash unlocks:
Require deposits or upfront payments from new clients
Send personal reminders for overdue invoices
Add pay-now links to open proposals or estimates
Offer ACH as the default payment method
Incentivize early payment
Add a credit card on file option for recurring clients
Most CEOs can unlock 10–20% of past-due invoices with just one personal follow-up.
Reduce hard + soft costs without changing your pricing
You don’t need to squeeze margins—you just need to stop giving them away.
Tactical moves:
Switch large clients to ACH
Audit your processing fees and renegotiate
Apply Level 2/3 data for B2B payments
If allowed in your state, enable legal surcharging or dual pricing
Remove unnecessary manual steps (e.g. invoice editing, double entry)
Manual invoicing and reconciliation is a hidden payroll expense.
Build a more resilient company by replacing guesswork with systems
If your team relies on remembering to send invoices or follow up on payments—your system is broken.
Choose one process to systemize:
CRM-triggered invoicing
Automated email follow-ups (Day 3 / 7 / 14)
Failed payment alerts + retry logic
QuickBooks + CRM integration for real-time reconciliation
Team notification workflow (e.g. Slack alert for overdue invoices)
Systems scale. People forget.
Recovered cash that was stuck
Reduced unnecessary payment fees
Eliminated at least one manual bottleneck
Gained visibility into your true payment flow
Started building a business that’s Built to Bill
Option 1: Run with it—optimize more of your systems using this playbook as your foundation.
Option 2: Book a call and let our team build it with you. We'll guide your setup, streamline your stack, and get you paid faster—with less effort.
Get instant access to our full Payment Optimization Guide and start implementing these strategies today.
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