A Better Way to Pay: The Benefits of Digital Payments

Come on, come on, wrenchin’ for the money
Come on, come on, your shop needs cash flow
Come on, come on, wrenchin’ for the money
Come on, come on, your shop needs cash flow

To quote the lyrics of the great AC/DC, “Money talks.” 

Cash flow is everything to a repair shop. Without it, you can’t make payroll, buy new tools, pay rent, or get snacks. You need to be bringing in money if you want to keep your operation going. 

Duh, Fullbay, you’re probably saying, I know this already. 

Oh, for sure. We know that you know. And we know that you knew that we know that you—

(Editor’s Note: Suz…)

Eh, sorry about that. 

Anyway, the thing we want to address today is money, and more importantly, payment. If you don’t have an efficient process in place, taking payment can slow your shop down. It can even influence the way your customers feel about you if they have to wait around in your shop while you painstakingly type in their credit card number…and then make a mistake…and then have to re-type it…and then…

(Editor’s Note: SUZ.) 

It can be a hassle, right? It’s often the last step in your workflow, but honestly, it’s the #1 thing that determines whether your shop runs smoothly (or at all). 

Let’s talk about it.

LIFE IS HARD ENOUGH, DUDE. MAKE PAYMENTS EASY. 

Easy payment reduces downtime for everyone. Your customer is on their way faster, your desk staff gets back to work faster, and your shop has money in the coffers — you got it — faster. Oh, and your customer talks about your shop fondly instead of with a wince. 

Making the payment process easy doesn’t require magic. It just means you have to meet your customer where they’re at and make it easy for them to pay their bills. In more practical terms, that means taking different kinds of credit cards, ACH/bank transfers, and newer methods like Apple Pay or Google Pay and Buy Now Pay Later. 

You may notice these payments all have something in common: they’re digital. 

HOW TAKING MULTIPLE DIGITAL PAYMENTS CAN HELP YOUR SHOP

OK, we’ve sold you on how taking multiple types of payments can elevate you in the eyes of your customers. Now let’s talk about how your shop can benefit. Spoiler alert: It’s not just getting paid faster (although that’s a big deal).

The digital era has ushered in heaps of exciting things. Streaming TV and movies, for one; you can plunk yourself down on your couch and watch almost anything, at any time. Information is also at your fingertips; you can look up pretty much anything at any hour of the day. And let’s not forget all the delivery services that can bring you anything from coffee filters to fine cuisine within the hour. 

What do all those things have in common? You pay them digitally. Money is deducted from your account or your card is charged, and the service continues. You barely even think about it, right?

Apply that logic to your shop. When you go digital, you cut a lot of friction out of the process. You can say goodbye to… 

• Filing paper invoices.
• Manual data entry (and sometimes re-entry!).
• Hunting down mailed checks.

Taking a digital payment through an integrated payment system (like Fullbay Payments!) means transactions are automatically recorded. Bookkeeping and reconciliation are faster and more accurate. Your whole cash flow speeds up.

You and your customer also get to enjoy the added security that comes with digital payments. We’ve talked about how paper checks can be a problem; it’s the same story when you have printed credit card authorization forms floating around the office. You want that stuff stored safely on the cloud where no one can stumble across it and use it for nefarious reasons. 

The right payment processor (we use Stripe) will be PCI-compliant and use encryption. It will include built-in protection against ransomware, chargebacks, and the dreaded fraud.  

HOW FULLBAY PAYMENTS CAN IMPROVE THE CUSTOMER PAYMENT EXPERIENCE

Here’s the truth: the Fullbay team has worked with a lot of shops, and for many owners, the payment process (and customer experience) is an afterthought until it becomes a problem. Paper-based shops sometimes end up sitting on invoices for days or weeks before mailing them. If a customer doesn’t pay up, it can take weeks or months to assign someone to attempt collection. It gets messy…and until payment arrives, the shop is basically just footing the bill. 

That’s why we built Fullbay Payments. It solves two very big payment-related problems with shops: Issuing invoices and collecting payment, and accepting the various payment methods customers may prefer.

Here’s an exhausting (but not exhaustive) list of payments Fullbay accepts:

• Credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Discover).
• ACH and bank transfer.
• Digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay so customers can access their saved credit and debit cards through their phones.
• Buy-Now-Pay-Later options like Affirm and Klarna so your customers can pay over time.

You may never have thought about digital wallet payments or Buy-Now-Pay-Later. This is another area where you can meet a customer where they’re at — the most immediate example that comes to mind is an emergency where repairs are necessary but the owner/driver doesn’t have cash on hand. 

Say your shop helps a driver stranded on the side of the road. He’s only got tap-to-pay — his wallet’s at home. No problem. He taps his phone against the terminal and boom! The payment is made.

Or maybe the driver opts for Buy Now Pay Later. In this example, Affirm or Klarna pay your shop in full. That’s it, you’re done. The driver then pays off Affirm or Klarna through installments. 

In both cases, you received payment when you might otherwise not have, and your customer was able to get the work they needed done quickly and easily, and it was a snap to pay up, too. 

YOUR PAYMENT PROCESS STARTS WITH YOU

While we think Fullbay Payments is pretty great, it’s only half of the actual solution. The other half is when you, the shop owner, start thinking about the payment process as part of the customer experience. 

If, at the very end of a service, something goes awry and a customer has trouble paying up through no fault of their own, it’s going to leave a bad taste in their mouth. The best service in the world isn’t going to offset that. 

But if you have a smooth, easy payment system that makes it ultra easy to pay up and get out? That seems like a small step to take, but it can make a huge impact on a customer’s day. 

And you know what they say: happy customers tend to be repeat customers. And repeat customers have their information stored in the cloud, and that makes payment even easier when they come back.

Just sayin’.