Should you use lawn care contracts?
New lawn care business owners quite often think about if they should or shouldn’t be using lawn care contracts with their residential clients. What works best? This was a question that was posted on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. A business owner wrote “My thought is to steer away from “paper” contracts with residential customers. When things appear too legal and long term, it gives people reasons to hesitate. However, I do send an e-mail that states what I am providing and the expected payment. What is the best way to handle this?”
Lawn Care Contract
We got a bunch of great responses to this question that I wanted to share with you.
One lawn care business owner wrote “I don’t do paper contracts. I treat the first payment as an agreement to pay. However, if I were doing monthly contracts I would do a paper contract.”
Another said “I do not use paper contracts with residential lawn customers only commercial. I have a verbal payment agreement with the customer which has worked well for me for the most part. The few customers I have had that gave me payment issues turned out to be pain in the ass customers I don’t want anyway so I drop them.”
Lastly here is a third opinion on the topic “I use written agreements, I apologize to the customer for all the fine print & explain it line by line but insist that I must have it as a cover your ass measure, as I have been burned many times in the past. The clients you WANT will understand & have no problem with it. The people who are likely to screw you will be scared off & that’s fine with me. I do this for year round monthly customers only.
Per cuts I do not require anything as it’s simple, I come & perform a service. You pay right now (or leave payment for me in a pre-chosen spot). And even at that… It’s usually the “per cuts” that screw me & usually it’s some new customer on the 1st service that never sends payment & ducks the phone calls…. so there never is a 2nd service & I send them to collections.”
I hope these different view points will help your lawn care business create a policy when it comes to contract usage. If you need lawn care contracts visit the link to download many free corms.
