TowingBossPro Blog — Accounts & Customers

Invoicing Commercial Tow Accounts and Following Up on Payment

A commercial account is only a good account if it pays. Plenty of tow companies have accounts that send a lot of work and pay slowly, partly because the account is slow and partly because the invoices are hard to process. An invoice that lacks a reference number, goes to the wrong person or arrives three weeks late will sit on someone's desk.

Card on File and Auto-Billing for Tow Accounts covered card on file for accounts that want it. This article covers everyone else: accounts that pay by invoice.

Send It to the Right Person

The person who calls for tows is often not the person who pays. At a body shop, the manager calls; the office manager pays. At a dealer, the service advisor calls; accounting pays. At a fleet, a coordinator calls; the fleet manager approves.

Contacts change, too. When an account's office manager leaves, invoices addressed to them may vanish into an unread inbox for weeks. When you learn of a change, update the account right away, and ask about it whenever an account that normally pays promptly starts running late.

Know who receives invoices for each account and keep it on the record. An invoice sent to the wrong inbox does not get paid; it gets forwarded, eventually.

Put the Right Details on the Invoice

Each account processes invoices differently, and the details they need vary. Common requirements:

• Vehicle details — year, make, model, plate and VIN
• Pickup and drop-off addresses
• The account's reference: repair order, stock number, unit number or job number
• Date of service
• Sales tax where it applies

Ask each new account at setup what they need on an invoice to approve it. It is a two-minute question that can save months of slow payments, and it tells the account that you understand how their business works.

Use custom fields for account-specific references so they appear consistently. An account that has to look up which vehicle your invoice is for will put it at the bottom of the pile.

Invoice Promptly

The sooner an invoice goes out, the sooner it gets paid. Create invoices from the call so the details carry over and nothing is retyped. Send them the same day if you can. Accounts that receive invoices in a predictable rhythm pay in a predictable rhythm.

Watch for calls that were completed but never invoiced. They are surprisingly common in busy tow offices, especially on nights and weekends, and they are pure lost revenue. Comparing completed calls with invoices under each account catches them.

In TowingBossPro, calls and invoices stay under the account, so you can see at a glance what has been invoiced and what has not.

Make Paying Easy

Online payments let accounts pay as soon as they see the invoice. The customer app shows invoices and accepts payment, so an account contact does not need to call you for a copy or a payment method. Accounts that are comfortable with it can keep a card on file and use auto-billing.

Batching is a choice to make with each account. Some prefer a single invoice per tow so each one matches a repair order or unit; others prefer fewer, larger invoices. Ask, note it on the account and stick to it so the account always knows what to expect.

Every step you remove from paying is one less reason for an invoice to sit.

Follow Up Without Being the Bad Guy

Payment follow-ups in TowingBossPro go out on unpaid invoices so nobody in your office has to remember to chase them. A polite automated reminder is less awkward than a phone call and often all it takes.

When reminders do not work, call. Ask whether there is a problem with the invoice — a missing reference, a dispute about a vehicle, a wrong contact. Often the slow payment has a simple cause you can fix.

Keep track of which accounts are consistently slow. That is information you need when deciding how much work to accept from them.

Review Open Invoices by Account

Once a week, look at open invoices grouped by account. Reports show what has been invoiced and paid, and the account history shows each customer's open items. An account with growing unpaid invoices needs a conversation before it needs more tows.

Clean, prompt, correct invoices sent to the right person and followed up automatically are the difference between busy accounts and profitable accounts. Invoicing and payment follow-ups are part of towing account management software in TowingBossPro. Next, we look at one of the trickiest customer relationships in towing: owners of vehicles in storage.