[Question] Service sheets and payments

[ians]

I sub contract to many companies and have done for the past 29 years ... i also use a lot of sub contractors when i am tired up in bigger projects.

I have a few issues when dealing with sub contractors ... they not as reliable ... sometimes try to steal customers and on the very rare occassion i have in the past had a customer bypass me and deal direclty with one of the sub contractors.

My question : How do your sub contractors handle jobs you send their way and how do the payements work ?

Do you have a service sheet book which they fill out and send you a copy ?

Do you then send the customer an invoice and wait till hell freezes over for payment ?

Anyone have a smart payment solution ... ie the subbies attends to the breakdown or install ... completes the job and bills the customer before leaving ( I dont know why we are still living in the middle ages with regards to payment terms) the question at the time of the call should be ... how will you be paying ...cash ...card or eft ? paid before the technician leaves site.

(I cant beleive with all this smart technology around ... I still have to check spelling and grammar)

[Dave A]

We only do specialist subs and we're entirely transparent with the client when we are calling in someone from outside of the company to attend to something.

If we get a report that the subbie is soliciting our client while attending to our business (i.e. we're the subbie's client too), we simply stop using them and take our business elsewhere. It hasn't happened often, but chasing after a bit extra has cost some folk substantial amounts of business from us...

For one of those who might come across this message, that was more than a bar last year alone (you dumbass).