Each contracting business is as unique as the jobs it takes on and the customers with whom it interacts. It was important to us at Knowify that we be able to support our many different contractors with an electronic payment solution that was as flexible as their businesses, including e-check/ACH and even credit card, when appropriate. Not all contractors should accept credit cards, and even those that do should not accept them for all jobs (see below!), BUT… there are times when offering a customer the ability to pay with a credit card can be very helpful to the contractor, and thus something we wanted to support.
Knowify <> PaySimple
We scoured the landscape of payment integration solutions looking for the right one to offer to our users. We considered factors like fee rates, reputation, the core payment network and technology underlying the platform, and more. Ultimately, we settled on PaySimple as our provider. Earlier this year, we worked alongside the PaySimple team to build a seamless connection between Knowify and PaySimple, ensuring that Knowify users could very quickly, easily, and seamlessly add payment links to their Knowify invoice emails, and have any recorded payments be reflected instantly inside their Knowify accounts. We were also able to brand the payment interface, ensuring that the experience felt consistent and comfortable for the homeowners or business owners making the payment.
Knowify users who sign up to take advantage of our PaySimple integration soon discover that their customers appreciate the professionalism of electronic payments. Better yet, offering electronic payments has the potential to accelerate cash collection, meaning more money now and far fewer emails or phone calls pestering the customer for payment. If you don’t want to take credit cards, that’s fine: the PaySimple/Knowify integration allows you to specify on a job-by-job basis whether you want to accept credit cards or ACH/e-check; the fees for the latter are very low, and it’s almost as easy for the customer as entering their credit card info!
Getting started with PaySimple is easy, and involves only a few forms and a quick call with the PaySimple onboading team so that they can set up a merchant account for your business. After that, connecting PaySimple to Knowify is only a 2-minute process guided by our service team.
Who should, and who should not, take credit cards
As suggested above, choosing whether to accept credit cards or not is actually not as easy a decision as you might think. As everyone knows, it can be quite expensive—as much as 3.5% of the payment! It definitely hurts to give up that much margin. However, there are times when accepting credit cards can be a real help, so you should not dismiss credit cards out of hand. For example, on jobs <$10,000, a homeowner or business owner might find it much easier to proceed with the job if the credit card company will finance it for them—they might not have the cash on hand right then to proceed, but if you take plastic, then they might have access to the money! Alternatively, if you’re doing service ticket work, 3% of $250 is only $7.50; it is not worth the cost of your time to have you chasing down late invoices for jobs that size… far better just to accept the credit card and move on!
These are just a few scenarios, but hopefully they’ve shown you that there is indeed a time and place for credit cards in construction—maybe you should consider offering credit card payments in your own business.
Want help getting set up with PaySimple? Contact us at support@knowify.com.