We have stabilized our business by adding a lot of commercial accounts. Within two years, we went from being 80% residential to over 60% commercial. It has definitely been the best thing we could have done. However, recently we have noticed that some of our accounts are taking longer to pay us. Most pay within 30 days but a few are now taking 45 days and some 60+ days.

What would be the best way to get these accounts to pay us faster? If this trend doesn't change, we will eventually fall behind in paying our bills.

It is part of doing commercial work. Been doing it for over 35 years and nothing changes. We tried giving discounts for payments in 10 days etc. etc. We gave up trying to get them to pay faster, just accept it or don't do any more work for the slow payers.

I do not know if you do already, but accepting credit cards might help, many time those corporate credit cards come with some great sky miles on them.

When setting up account ask how billing is to be set up, ask for CC #.

We actually have some of our accounts pay with credit card. Before we do the next cleaning for these slow paying customers, I am going to insist on them having a card on file.

I can handle 45 days but 60 is just too long. A few thousand dollars hanging out there makes it tough for a small guy like me to keep ahead of the bills.

Offer a 10% discount if paid within 30 days I worked for a fuel company
that offered a 10% discount if the bill was paid within 10 days. They did not have alot of delinquint accounts