Passing the Check: What to Do About Processing Fees

Who’s covering your processing fees?

Your customers are, right?

Right?

Bueller?

No fair, Fullbay, you may be saying, you’ve done the Bueller thing…a few times.

(Writing trick #473: If you find a line that works, reuse it.)

But seriously. There’s all kinds of fees associated with running a business, particularly credit card processing fees and other miscellaneous costs around accepting payments. Some shop owners just accept these fees as a cost of doing business, but it really does make sense to pass these costs on to your customers.

Yes, Fullbay makes it easy to do so when you use Fullbay Payments.

Yes, we’re going to show you how.

Yes, friends, it’s another of those posts.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO ADD FEES TO INVOICES?

You might look at processing fees as something your shop needs to deal with, but think about it from a numeric standpoint. It’s one thing to cover processing fees for one customer. But what if you have 200 customers?

That’s a lot of money down the drain.

You don’t want to lose money. You want to earn it.

WHAT KIND OF FEES CAN I ADD TO FULLBAY’S INVOICES?

You can add whatever fees you want!

Seriously. You can create a fee and decide whether it will be a percentage of an invoice or a flat rate. You can choose what to apply the fee to (for example, the subtotal) and even under what cost conditions it will be applied (for example, a customer spends $50).

We’re not suggesting you tack on a zillion fees for everything you do, of course. But you can build fees around specific expenditures like:

• Payment processing. This is important for accepting credit cards and ACH!
• Convenience. Are you headed out to your customer’s yard? To the roadside? Build out fees that will cover the time spent on the road and any travel costs.
• Shop supplies. Yes, you should be charging for shop supplies.

By the way, you can add these fees (and any others you dream up) to any estimates you build with Fullbay. Expensive, intricate work can often increase fees—practice transparency and give your customer the full rundown of what they can expect to pay (including any fees) when you send them an estimate for authorization.

You can also set fees for specific customers. For example, you might need to go to a customer’s yard to tend to their units—you can create a specific convenience fee that is applied to that customer’s record.

PASS ON THE COSTS WITH FULLBAY

Even if you only attach a processing fee, that’s still an average of 3% per invoice—and 3% across all your revenue. If your shop pulls in $200,000 in revenue a month, that could be thousands you’ve lost if you just eat the processing fees.

Your customers know processing fees are a thing. What’s more, they probably expect them. So don’t grit your teeth and pay up—instead, pass it on.

Want to up your revenue? See what else Fullbay Payments can do for you—and while you’re at it, give our free demo a whirl! You’ve got nothing to lose and revenue to gain.