Receiving Tips

I just thought I would throw this out there. I typically prefer to be paid by cash or check to avoid processing fees but I have recently noticed that I am more likely to receive tips when I send an invoice for credit card payment and I make sure to enable tipping.

Has anyone else noticed this? Or any opposing ideas? Of course this is for residential clients

As the majority of my residential clients are retirees, roughly 65-80+, their generation is more accustomed to carrying cash and tipping service people. So, sometimes they will add it onto the check, and sometimes they will hand me an extra $20-$50. Mind you they are aware that I am the company owner, and I give them a fair price for cleaning, they still give me some extra bucks. I had one new client tell me I wasn’t charging them enough after I did a cleaning. Their total for PW the house, lanai/porch enclosure, vinyl fence, and windows in/out, plus 4 window re-screens was just short of $500. He wrote me a check for $750 and asked me to set up a bi-weekly commercial window cleaning at his storefront.

I, like you, try in everyway to stay away from card processing to avoid the fees. Though the Florida Supreme Court made a decision about 5 years ago that it wasn’t fair for small businesses to take the brunt of the card processing fees, since the main reason for the hike from 0.5% per transaction to 3-5% per transaction (depending on the card company), was the card companies offering the rewards and miles, etc. They determined that in essence, the card company was collecting the additional fees in order to pay the reward points or cash back percentage offers to their customer, literally taking the money out of the purveyor who just did all the work. The court ruled that this was unfair and that the small business purveyor may require up to a 4% card processing fee in order to cover any card convenience fees.

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