In this joint webinar from Clear Estimates and Clearent by Xplor, we'll discuss tips for contractors for simplifying payments. We'll discuss modernizing your payments workflow, reducing failed payments, and streamlining your accounting process overall. Join us for this fun and informative virtual seminar!
Thank you for joining in for Digital Payments: A Contractor's Guide! My name is Michael. I'm here with the customer success team for Clear Estimates.
And today we're going to go over some common pain points for contractors when it comes to invoicing and getting paid. So we're going to share a few tips on how to overcome challenges like that with your invoicing both through digital payment methods, and otherwise.
Joining me today is Caleb from Clearent by Explore, which is our fully integrated payments partner. And Caleb is an expert in the digital payment space. So in a little while here, Caleb's going to take over. He's going to talk about payment solutions available with Clear Estimates and talk about what to expect when you're working with a payment processor. Thank you so much for joining us, Caleb. If you want to just say a quick hello here to the viewers.
Absolutely. Hello, guys. It's nice to join you guys today. I'm Clearent. I I'm sorry. I'm Caleb Lindberg with Clearent, by Explore, partner development manager. I'll be showing you guys today, exactly all the ins and outs of, what it'll look like to connect payments to your clear estimate software.
Excellent. Thank you so much for joining in with us today, Caleb. So Caleb's going to take over here in a short while. He's going to talk, about, sort of giving us a little bit of background on electronic payment processing. Before that, like I said, we're going to go over some best practices for contractors when it comes to invoicing, as well as a little bit of background on payments.
So let's just go over some quick housekeeping first. We are going to be covering a lot in a short time today, but we will have some time for q and a here just in a little while. So as we go along, you can add in your questions using the chat box over on the right side of your screen. You may need to enter in your name in order to see that chat box, but but then you can participate once you do that.
If anything does come to mind, just send in your questions. We're going to be answering as many as we can toward the end.
Also this presentation is being recorded, so if you miss anything or if you have to duck out, don't worry about it. All attendees are going to receive an email with the recording link after the presentation, and this is going to be available on YouTube as well.
If you are having any issues with the presentation quality, if the screen is blurry or the connection seems slow, there should be a gear icon kind of in the bottom right corner of your player, that you can use to adjust the quality. Also if you do have any issues with sound or anything like that, just try to refresh your browser. That'll usually fix any issues with that.
So like I said, we're going to start off here with just a little bit of background, talk about common accounting pains for contractors, and then we'll discuss best practices and solutions.
From there, Caleb from explore will be discussing the benefits of working with a payment processor and what to expect from your payment terminal.
And then in a little bit, we're going to show you what kinds of tools are available on the clear estimate side, for accounting and invoicing. And then we're going to explain how to use those tools alongside your integrated payment terminal, to really help streamline your payment process. And then we're going to wrap it up today with just a little, bit of q and a here and some additional resources.
So that being said, let's go ahead and dive into a little bit of background on payments.
So in twenty twenty two, chaser HQ published their late payments report, which is just what it sounds like. It's a study on late payments, and they shared some interesting findings. Now among those, almost nine in every ten businesses are paid late on a regular basis.
So that's across the board, not just specific to contractors. They found that overdue invoices are a big problem for small or mid sized businesses really of any kind. And they found that in the case of smaller businesses, failed and late payments can actually lead to the failure of the business itself.
So this, especially impacts construction companies. Now within the same report, nearly all respondents from the construction industry said they are regularly paid late. Thirty six percent of those invoices being paid out more than fifteen days after the due date.
So late payments are a huge problem for any construction company and small and mid sized contractors seem to struggle the most when it comes to late payments.
So what causes this? So let's talk about some of the common causes of late payments. Now of course, there's a lot of different reasons why payments might be late, but frequently a lot of it just comes down to communication issues with the client. So the contractor and the client are not on the same page about one or more aspects of the project.
So let's look at some common misunderstandings with the homeowner that can lead to past due invoices.
So firstly, material costs have changed during the project.
So this was especially true in the past couple of years. So maybe you agreed to one price with the homeowner, and costs have risen since the project began. You need to pass those extra costs along. So this can lead to disagreements with the homeowner about the cost of service, which can a lot of times lead to late payments.
Another big one here, changes in the scope of work during the project. So maybe the homeowner is indecisive, or you run into something unexpected on-site after the contract is signed. Let's say there's structural issues or damage that you don't end up finding until after work has begun, that end up impacting the final price. So that can lead to disagreements about the cost of service, and potentially late or even disputed payments.
And lastly here, miscommunication on payment details themselves. So the contractor and the client aren't on the same page with payment expectations.
They're not on the same page as far as payment due dates, late fees and payment arrangements aren't fully discussed. So this can all lead to confusion, miscommunication, disagreements, and of course a major increase in hours spent working on accounts receivable.
So a lot of times it's the contractor who's paying for materials and labor upfront, handling the various expenses of the project while it's in motion, and when payments are late, that tends to put stress on builders. So in order to move the project forward, there really needs to be adequate cash flow. So how can we avoid late payments?
Well contractors can address issues like this in two different ways.
The first way here is through the proper use of contracts. So what that means is outlining all the details, all the possibilities, all the options, really all the what ifs being addressed in the initial contract at the time of signing.
So in the case of unexpected costs on the project, you want to make use of things like escalation clauses, contingency agreements, how you expect to handle change orders, any provisions you need to include in the contract or outlined and communicated to the client prior to signing.
So this is going to help solve problem number one. You can account for any change in material costs through the use of escalation clauses in the contract. You can set aside and agree upon a contingency budget for any unforeseen issues or changes while the project is underway. So in a little while here, we're going to show you what kind of, steps you can take to add in contract verbiage like this to your proposal through Clear Estimates, and cover your bases in situations like this.
Now another major pitfall here is improper procedure for change orders, and markup and profits Michael Stone discusses this in a webinar we conducted with him a few years back. That webinar specifically covers best practices for markup and profit, but really your company financials overall.
So we're going to share a link to that here at the end of the presentation. But just to quickly recap on that, having your change orders defined and signed by all parties before the work begins is going to help you avoid billing disputes which can of course lead to late payments.
So the number two way here is through the use of payment schedules. Now this is huge for avoiding payment disputes.
Having all payment dates, details, expectations clearly communicated to the client before the project begins is just going to help keep everyone on the same page. So you want to outline the payment terms and the due dates in the contract itself, so that way the homeowner knows what to expect, and they're agreeing to the payment terms at the time of signing.
So your payment schedule should include things like expected due dates, each expected payment total, any special terms you've discussed with the client. So maybe there's a discount or some kind of adjustment in cost that you've spoken about. You just want to make sure all of that's outlined. So you should be negotiating those details upfront, so that way both sides can plan accordingly as far as the project schedule in the homeowners budget.
But what I'm sure you found is that even with a clearly defined payment schedule, as many of you know clients can sometimes still be unreliable with payments. Now some amount of this might be unavoidable, but one way you can mitigate this is by simplifying your billing strategy. So what that means is just making it easy for the client to pay you on time.
So this is where modernizing your payment process can have a lot of benefits. So if you are still taking paper checks, pay attention because research has shown that the majority of people prefer to pay their bills online. So digital payments tend to be a lot more successful than traditional mailed checks, or I'm sorry, traditional paper checks.
And it also makes sense as time goes by less and less folks are accustomed to even using paper checks. Far fewer are going to be used to using a paper check to pay for something like a large renovation project.
So back in two thousand, paper checks were used in forty two billion dollars in transactions. This is according to the twenty nineteen Federal Reserve payment study.
By twenty eighteen that number dropped to only fourteen point five billion.
I don't have stats on how much that number has dropped since twenty eighteen, but I can imagine it's gone up.
Also in two thousand, the fed saw fifteen point six billion dollars in credit card payments, but by twenty eighteen, credit cards were used in a one billion in transactions that year alone. So again, that's from twenty nineteen Federal Reserve.
So it makes sense why digital payment methods are preferred. As time goes by, more and more consumers are just accustomed to using digital payment methods.
So offering digital easier to collect, easier to track.
So you'll have the benefit of tracking the payments digitally, which make options for managing payments and accounting tasks in Clear Estimates.
But digital payments will shorten the length of time it takes to collect a payment.
So your check isn't getting lost in the mail. You're not waiting as long for a check to clear the bank. You're not worrying as much about bounce checks with digital payments. And believe it or not, payments, electronic payments are more secure, and they're less susceptible to fraud.
So automating your payment process is just going to allow you to spend more time on the project itself, less time worrying about chasing down checks, and just more time focusing on the task at hand. So a quick tip here, provide different payment options. Different options gives the client a little more flexibility with how they're going to pay you. Many of our contractors utilize both ACH and credit card payments.
Both of those payment options are available through Clearent by Explorer, which again is the only fully integrated payment solution with Clear Estimates.
So at this point, we're going to take it over to Caleb who's going to give us an in-depth overview of what payment processing look like through Clearent by Explorer.
Explore works with a lot of merchants in the same space, and their team's extraordinarily knowledgeable when it comes to payment processing. So without further delay, let's go ahead and take it over to Caleb here.
Hey, Michael. Thank you.
Let me go ahead and share my screen really quick.
Wonderful. There we go.
And, as I mentioned earlier, hi, everyone. I'm Piot Lundberg, partner development manager with Clearent by Explorer.
We are a full service payment solution provider focused on helping our customers achieve more growth faster.
A little bit about us, Clarion by Explorer has over twenty seven billion in annual volume, eighty two thousand businesses worldwide, and over nine hundred partners selling our products.
Clear by Explorer's payment processing solution integrates directly within clear ClearEstimates software to streamline payments. This will allow you to send invoices and collect payments from anywhere on your own schedule.
We offer competitive pricing to save you money, and next day funding options are available as well.
You can view your statements, deposits, details directly from your merchant portal, and save recurring customer cards on file for an easier personalized checkout experience.
All transactions made within Clear Estimates can be viewed directly within our virtual terminal to eliminate the need for double entry.
We have developed a pay link feature to allow you to collect pay link, payments from anywhere. Simply create a pay link to send to your clients, allowing them to make a payment securely hosted by cleaner by Explorer.
Let's dive deeper, and I'll show you exactly how this works.
So the page that you're looking at now, this is your merchant portal where you can view transactions, deposits, access statements, tax documents, and manage your account settings with Clearent by Explorer.
You can also access the Clearent virtual terminal, directly from this page by clicking the legacy virtual terminal button.
At this page, you're now seeing the Clearent virtual, Clearent by Explorer's virtual terminal. Here you can process transactions via card, ACH, or pay link, view transactions, receipts, or batch information.
By clicking request payment, this will, this will open up our pay link feature. To generate a pay link, start by entering your requested payment amounts and click request payment.
Simply enter your customer's phone number or copy, and paste your pay link directly into an email to send your payment request.
If sent via text, your customer will receive a text message to opt in to messages by Clearent, Clearent on behalf of your business name. The customer would then reply yes to that text message, and then click on the pay link provided, in the text in order to submit and enter their, payment information.
To set up your payments account, scan the QR code provided by Clear Estimates and submit your contact information to Clear by Explorer.
Our sales team will reach out to complete a merchant application and schedule your your payments activation appointment approximately ten days out.
When approved, we will set up your account and send the connection key to ClearEstimates to connect your account for payments.
You may reschedule your activation appointment as needed or give us a call to for immediate activation assistance.
And when adding integrated payments to Clear Estimate software, you will receive next day deposits, get twenty four seven access to online reporting, and a live customer support team will be available to assist you.
If you have any questions about anything I discussed today, with accepting payments by Clear or by Explorer, please drop them in the chat now, and I'll be happy to answer those questions for you.
At this point, I will turn the presentation back over to Michael.
Thank you so much for the insight, Caleb. Just going to check the chat here and see if there are any questions here for the Clearent team or for Caleb.
I'm not seeing anything right at the moment.
So at this point, what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and take a look at the integration process for Clearent with ClearEstimates.
So in this situation, you've already onboarded with Clearent, and you've gotten a terminal set up. The next step here is going to be over on the clear estimate side. So we're first going to walk through the integration process itself. It's going to start here in your email.
You're going to receive two emails from my colleague, Jack. One is going to be called accessing terminals information for order, And the other, the other email here is going to be called ordered terminals information for terminal. So the very first step here is to find this accessing terminals information for order email. We're going to open that up.
And what we're going to find in this email is, a paragraph of text. Right at the end of the paragraph we're going to see a password. So just sort of a string of characters and numbers. What we want to do is we want to just copy this password here to our clipboard.
So we're just going to go ahead and highlight that and either control c or you can left click and copy that. And then we're going to head back into our email. What this is is it's a password we're going to use to open up the pdf here in order terminals information. So we're going to open up this order terminals information email, and then we're going to scroll down to the pdf that's going to be attached right here.
So I'm going to go ahead and click this, and then we're going to enter in our password.
We're going to go ahead and paste that in here, and click submit.
And this is going to open up our terminals information. So this will be sent over to you by clear estimate. It's then all the information about your payment terminal.
What we're looking for here in this email is this API key. So we're going to find this API key and we're going to highlight and copy this entire API, back into Clear Estimates here. So we're just going to go ahead and copy that to our clipboard, And then we're going to head into Clear Estimates.
Actually, wrong place here.
So once we're signed in to Clear Estimates here, we're going to see that we're on the home page. This is kind of your dashboard for recent estimates you've, been working on.
But what we're looking for when we log in is this options tool. So this is what we're going to find here. Up in the top right corner, there should be an options tool. It looks like a checkbox.
So we're going to go ahead and click that. That's going to pull up this menu here on the left and we're going to scroll down to the bottom of the menu. And second to bottom here, we're going to find the integrations tool right here. So we're going to click into integrations.
From the integrations tool, we're just going to scroll down here to the bottom. We're going to find this clear and integration section. And then right here in this secret API key bubble, we're going to go ahead and paste in that entire API. And then we're going to click save here. I'm not sure you can see the blue save button. Very important. Just make sure you click this blue save button right down here at the bottom.
So now we're going to get confirmation that the integration was added.
So the next step here is going to be to run a test test sale. So your Clearent rep is going to probably ask you to run a test sale just to make sure the terminal is working. So that's what we're going to do first here. We're going to head back to home, and then we can either set up a new project here, or we can use a sample estimate. I just always advise don't use an actual live customer's estimate for this. So in this case, I'm just going to open up this sample project here for Steven sample.
And you don't even need any project contents. You don't need to build an estimate to run this test sale. We just need to create a project here.
And then what we're going to do is we're going to find this more option up in the top right of our projects page.
So from the more drop down, we're going to go ahead and select this option to create an invoice.
What we want to do at this point, we're going to see this add invoice window, and I'm just going to go ahead and use a manual, invoice option here. So I'm going to go ahead and click manual, and then we just want to run our test sale for a small amount. So say five dollars or one dollar. I'm just going to run it for one dollar, and then we're going to call this test invoice, and then we're going to go ahead and click save. So what that's going to do is it's going to show us this invoice link. So this is a really handy link, you know, later when we're creating actual estimates, we'll be able to, either text this, email this to a client for payable invoicing here.
So I can either copy this, URL here into a different tab. There's also going to be this shortcut button over here to the right. Just sort of looks like a little box with an arrow. We're going to go ahead and click that, and that's going to open up our invoice, our invoice link here.
So at this point what we would do is we would go ahead and fill in our own card details here and pay ourselves this one dollar, just to make sure that that test transaction is going to go through. Your your Clearent rep's going to be available to help if you do have any, questions about whether or not it was successful.
But while we're looking at this invoice, I'm starting to think ahead here for when I'm actually going to be working on an actual customer's project.
This invoice, it's just going to serve to collect payment on my payment terms like we discussed in the beginning. One thing I'm noticing here is it's saying that my invoices are due in thirty days. So the first thing I want to do is customize that, make that a little more personalized for my business.
My invoices I'm going to want them do right away.
So once our test transaction is completed, I'm going to go ahead and close out of this and we're going to go back into Clear Estimates here.
And then we're going to find this options tool once again. So we were just over here. We're going to click options again.
And this is where we can manage things like report settings, obviously integrations, manage our account, and what have you. Over here on the left side in the menu, we're going to see report settings, and what we want what we want to do is find this invoice option right down here.
So this is going to pull up our invoice settings and then right down here we're going to see that invoice note. I'm going to go ahead and customize this so that it says invoices are due immediately and any other verbiage you want to add here specific to the invoice itself. Now keep in mind project details, things like the cost of the or the cost of each individual item in the project. All of those details about the scope of work are going to be included in the initial contract we send and then the invoice is just going to serve to collect payment on those payment terms.
So we'll walk through that whole process right now. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to scroll down to the bottom right. There's going to be a blue save button. We're going to go ahead and click that.
That's going to update our invoice settings.
And at this point, let's go ahead and jump into an actual project for our client here. So I'm going to go back to the home page one more time. Again this is kind of your dashboard for estimates you've been working on. And right here for John Smith, I have a kitchen and bathroom renovation project that I've already sat down and estimated all the work.
So the estimating side is done. All the project contents is added. My price looks good. We're not going to walk through the estimating process too much today. We do have other guides, that'll walk you through all of that process.
So today what we're going to really focus on is just setting up the contract, making sure our payment terms are included, and then we're going to start invoicing on this project.
So the first step here is I'm going to find this reports tool up here. Just to the right of the projects page, you're going to see this looks like a clipboard, And this is where you manage report settings. You can print different proposals. This is where you can also manage invoices from the cost status tab.
But what we're going to do is we're going to be here in this boiler plate tool. Now boiler plate is just another term for contract language, legalese, any kind of addendums or provisions you want included on the proposal for the client can be thought of as boiler plate. So these will be included on every estimate you create. So when we're in this boiler plate tool here, we just want to scroll down to the bottom left and again this is where we can kind of set up a contract to be included on that proposal.
Now in Clear Estimates, if you've just signed up here, you're just going to see a number of sample contracts here. These aren't real contracts designed to be used on an actual estimate. They're just sort of an example to give you an idea of how this could be set up.
So we are going to add in our own contract. Your contract is typically going to be very specific to your business, type of trade, number of employees, location, and what have you. All of these things can play into a contract. So we're just going to show you how you can sort of add in your own verbiage here.
So you'll see these sample agreements here, and as we click into the titles of these, contracts, we're going to see the text within populate over here on the right side.
And then just to the left, you're going to see three check boxes for each of these headings.
P, f, and s. And what that stands for is preliminary, formal, and subcontractor report. Now most commonly, you're going to use your formal proposal. This is what gets sent to the customer from the project's page.
It's what you're going to see when you view report while you're working on the project. So most of the time, we just need to use this formal proposal. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to remove these example contracts from all of my reports. Most, most importantly here the formal, but I'm also just going to uncheck all of these boxes.
And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and click add heading down here at the bottom, and we're going to add in our own contract.
So this is just going to create a blank heading here. So we're going to click that, then it's just going to show us a text box over here on the right. I'm going to change the title of this contract to just general agreement. This can be any title you'd like.
And then what I've done is I've sat down with my attorney, and I actually have drafted up some contract language very specific to my business. But what I've included here is some general provisions about the project.
I've also included a sample escalation clause in case material costs increase during the project as well as a contingency agreement to cover you know, unforeseen conditions, missed work, areas of damage, that might come up while a project's underway. So what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to copy and paste this entire contract, back into Clear Estimates here. So I'm going to come back into my boiler plate and go ahead and add that contract in. So this is going to cover all of my bases for the unforeseen like we talked about in the beginning. So at this point we're going to go ahead and make sure this is included on our formal proposal. We're going to do that over here in the, boiler plate information window. We're just going to check the f checkbox here to make sure this is included in my formal proposal.
Because it's set up here in this intro tab, it's going to show up at the top of the agreement. If we did want to set that up at at the bottom, we can set that up as an outro boiler plate. In this case, we're just going to leave this as is right at the top of the contract, and this language is going to show up on that formal proposal.
So next, I want to make sure I have some payment, arrangements included in this contract. So I want my payment terms to be included in that contract like we talked about.
So there is a number of template payment schedules you can use on actual projects that are going to be included for you right when you sign up. In this case, we're just going to walk through creating a brand new payment schedule, that'll be specific to your needs here during your project. So I'm going to find this options tool one more time up here in the top right. Again, this looks like a checkbox.
And then the fourth option down here is going to be for our payment schedule editors. We're going to go ahead and click into payment schedule editor. Again, if you want to browse through those templates, they're all going to be here. But in this case, we're just going to go ahead and create a brand new payment schedule. So we're going to do that by clicking new schedule right here.
This is going to create a new payment schedule, and then we're going to go ahead and give this a title. I'm going to call this kitchen and bath draw schedule.
Now if you want to make this default for projects, in other words, make it so that it's always included when you create a new project, you can do that over here. There's going to be an option. I'm just going to leave it as is.
And what we want to do at this point is just scroll down to the very bottom of this schedule editor, and we're going to see this add item button. So for each payment term that's included in the draw schedule, we're going to be setting up a separate item. So let's go ahead and add in our first item here. So I'm going to click add item.
This is going to pull up this window here, which is where we can create our payment schedule.
Now there are three different types of payment schedules you can create. So we can do a fixed dollar amount. So we're clicking this type drop down by the way and we're going to see the three different options here. Fixed amount which is usually just for a fixed dollar amount.
Percentage of which is automatically going to calculate a percentage of the project cost. So this is especially handy if you want to reuse these payment schedules. If you set them all up as percentage, then no matter what the project cost is, it's still going to calculate accordingly.
And then we can also do remaining balance due. So this will just automatically calculate the remaining balance due on the project.
So I'm going to start off here with a fixed dollar amount, and we're going to make this an initial deposit item for three thousand dollars. We're just going to go ahead and add in a value of three thousand here.
So we have fixed amount and value three thousand.
And then I'm going to click up into this description box up here at the very top and we're just going to give this some verbiage here. So we're going to say initial deposit of and then what we want to do is insert our value into the description here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to click this orange v button just to the right of the description and that's going to insert bracket v a l and bracket.
Now on the actual proposal, this is going to pull the value automatically. So don't get tripped up here and, you know, delete this value and type something in. This will automatically pull that value. So you can just leave that as is.
And now all we need to do is set up the report text for the different reports that this payment schedule item could show up on. So preliminary proposal, formal proposal, and even in the invoice could all have different text. Now in my case, I'm just going to make them all the same. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use this d button over here on the right which is going to copy my description which of course includes that value into each of the report text boxes here. So I just click the three d's. I filled it in for all these different reports and we're going to go ahead and click save.
So that's our first payment schedule item. So let's add in one more. I'm going to go ahead and click add item again. And this time I'm going to set this up as a percentage of so I'd like fifty percent of the project cost paid out, two weeks in. Now this is just for example just to show you, how you can set these up here. So what I'm going to call this is two week check-in payment of and then we're going to go ahead and hit value. That's going to insert the fifty percent value there.
Same idea. I'm just going to click these three d's that's going to fill in all that report text and we're going to go ahead and save it.
And then let's just add in one more item here.
So in this case I'm going to go ahead and click add item one more time, and what we're going to do is remaining balance due. So we're going to go ahead and select that type drop down one more time, and we're going to grab balance due. Don't need to do anything with the value with balance due. All we need to do is go ahead and type in our description and add our value here. So we're just going to say balance due on completion of and click my value. Once again, I'm just going to click these three d's and we're going to save it.
Very important here. Just make sure we click this blue save at the very bottom right. Don't miss this step. This is going to save the schedule to your account.
So now my schedule was updated.
So let's go ahead and make sure we apply this to the project we're working on. So what we're going to do, we still have the same, kitchen and bath renovation project open. We're going to find the reports tool one more time. Again, this looks like a clipboard, and then we're going to choose one of our proposal tabs either preliminary or formal. The payment schedule is going to be added to the project, so it's not going to matter which one you select here. I'm just going to select my formal tab, and then here we're going to see this payment schedule drop down.
So let's go ahead and grab that payment schedule.
So here is my kitchen and bath draw schedule. So we get confirmation this was added to the project. Now in the beginning, we talked about the importance of including things like due dates in the payment schedule.
Since I was setting up that payment schedule to be used on multiple projects, I didn't include any dates in the description, because I want to be able to reuse that. But what's nice about this is from once we've, attached to this payment schedule to the project, we're going to have this schedule editor here in the reports tool that we can make kind of one off adjustments to the payment schedule specific to this project only. So I'm going to go ahead and open up my schedule editor and I just want to add in some due dates for those different payment terms. So here is my initial deposit of three thousand.
I'm going to go ahead and open this up. Now I could add in due dates for all the report text fields here. In this case, I'm just going to, for brevity's sake just add them to the formal proposal and invoice settings since that's the reports we're going to be looking at here today. So for my formal text, I'm just going to say this is due today to one initial deposit.
And I'm going to add that to my invoice verbiage as well.
And then we're going to go ahead and save that. Same idea for my two week check-in payment. Just going to open this up with the blue edit button and add in my due dates. I'm going to say this is due two fifteen and due two fifteen for my invoice, and we're going to go ahead and save that. And if you do have an idea of when the project's going to be completed, we can go ahead and add this to the balance due as well. So I'll just say it's due three one due three one.
So then we're going to go ahead and save that. We're going to click save one more time.
And that's going to update the schedule on this project. So at this point, let's go ahead and preview the proposal we're going to send to the customer. So to do that, I'm going to head back here to the projects page again where we built the estimate.
And then we're going to go ahead and click this view report eyeball and click this print to PDF right here. And what this will do is it's going to pull up that contract that we're going to be sending over to the customer, including all of my verbiage, my payment terms, etcetera.
So here's my formal proposal. We see my contracts included again with my provisions, my escalation clause and my contingency agreement.
Below that, we'll see that Clear Estimates has printed out a professional sentence of text, for each of the items in my project that communicate, to the client exactly what needs to take place in verbiage that they can understand here. And we're going to see that it's all kind of organized by scope of work here.
And then we're going to scroll down a little bit here. We're going to see the total project cost, and then here is my payment schedule for this project. So here we have my due dates. We have each payment amount included right here.
And then we have a nice place where the client can sign the agreement.
So let's go ahead and pretend we send over this proposal to the homeowner. They went ahead and pulled the trigger. They want to go ahead with this project, and so at this point we need to invoice on that initial deposit. So let's go ahead and walk through that process.
So what we're going to do, so once again we could do this from this more drop down here in the projects page and create an invoice. What I'm going to do is I'm going to click view invoices instead, and what this will do is it's going to take us into the reports tool into the cost status page which again is kinda where we manage all of the invoices and payments for this specific estimate.
So we can do the same thing here. We're going to see this option to add invoice. I'm going to go ahead and click that.
And right off the bat, it knows I have this initial deposit. So this is all set to go and ready to create my invoice. So I'm going to go ahead and just, make sure my date and due date look correct. I'm going to make sure it's due today.
So February first. I'm going to adjust my description just to really make sure that due date is communicated to them. And then we're going to go ahead and click create invoice.
So once again, it's going to show us that invoice link.
So we're going to go ahead and grab that invoice link, and then we are going to pop open into another tab here and take a look at this invoice. So here's the invoice. It's going to collect payment on that initial deposit. We have our invoice note mentioning that the invoices are due immediately and then the the homeowner can just go ahead and plug in their payment details and go ahead and pay you that three thousand on that initial deposit.
So back here in the cost status page, we're going to see the record of that invoice here.
If we want to make any adjustments to that, there's going to be an edit button. And if we want to email this to the customer, we can go ahead and use this envelope icon. This will create an email to send over including, this invoice link. So we see that's included in the email We can send that off to the homeowner.
And then like I said, they'll be able to pay it right here from the invoice.
Now I'm not able to demonstrate this because I would need to run an actual transaction through, this invoice term or this payment terminal here. But what will happen is it will actually automatically record a record of payment for this invoice when they do go ahead and pay you.
So I'm just going to do this manually just so you see what this looks like. I'm going to go ahead and click add payment and then I can choose from invoice here, and we're going to see this unpaid three thousand dollar invoice. We're going to go ahead and create our payment. So now we have a record of payment on this invoice.
So let's go ahead and take a look at what happens on the invoice once it's paid. So this is what happens. It becomes a receipt automatically. So we're seeing payment received.
We're seeing the status on this invoice as paid. And if your, your client does need a, printed receipt, there's going to be a PDF option down here at the bottom. So you won't need to send them over a receipt. They'll be able to do that right from the e invoice here.
So then back here in Clear Estimates, like I said, we have record of this, payment. We we have record of the invoice we added. And then if we want to see a breakdown now of what's going on cost wise here in this project, we can go ahead and click this print report option down here. And what this will do is pull up the cost status report which is just going to give us a breakdown of what's been paid on this estimate versus what is still due.
So we're seeing here, the total project cost. We're seeing the amount paid to date is three thousand, and we're seeing the remaining balance. And just below that we're seeing a breakdown of the invoices and payments on this project so far. So this report is yours to keep.
You can download this to your drive if you want to use this for your bookkeeping.
If the customer does want to see this for any reason, there is going to be an option to send this to customer from the cost status page as well. So you can kind of see what the process is going to look like here. It's just going to take a lot of the guess work out of the invoicing and payments and be able to really communicate, your terms to your client very easily and just sort of streamline this entire process for you.
So that about covers the process on that. So at this point in time, we're just going to go ahead and jump into q and a and see if we do have any questions from the audience here.
And I'm actually not seeing any questions here from the audience right now.
But that's okay. If questions do come up, just reach out to us at support at Clear Estimates dot com. We can certainly answer any questions that do come up even if you're watching this later tonight. Just feel free to reach out at your convenience.
Really quick, I did want to share out a couple of resources here. Number one, this is the the link to the Clearent landing page where you can get started with Clearent and begin the process of setting up a payment terminal.
So there is a QR code here that'll take you right over to their landing page. I'm also going to share a link here in the chat. If you can't see the chat message, to the right or if you're having any trouble with this QR, just reach out to us at support at clear and we can provide that to you. And we are doing a special offer for attendees. If you do end up getting signed up with Clearent, add it into Clear Estimates and end up processing two hundred and fifty dollars by March fifteenth. We'll apply a free month of Clear Estimates to your account. So all you'll need to do is just process that amount of volume and then reach out to us at support at Clear Estimates with your account information, we'll be happy to add that in.
Also earlier we were talking about the markup and profit calculating your markup webinar from Michael Stone. So a great resource I just wanted to include, just kinda covers best practices for company financials, tips for pricing your jobs correctly. This QR code will take you right over to that webinar as well. I'm also going to share a link to this here in the chat.
So like I said, just a really good resource there. I recommend taking a look.
And then lastly, like I said, if you have any trouble, getting any of those links or if you have any questions about the presentation today, just feel free to reach out to us at support at Clear Estimates. We're happy to answer any questions you have over here on the clear estimate side. I do want to thank, Caleb once again for joining in today, and I want to thank the audience for being a part of this, and we'll look forward to catching up with you next time!