Running the Business · Part 3
Taking payment: cards, ACH, checks, cash, financing partners, and getting every dollar into the right account
How a customer pays decides when the money arrives, what it costs to accept, and whether the state's honest-pricing law, the contract law, and the IRS have anything to say about it. This lesson sets up the payment methods a plumbing business should accept and the order to offer them, explains why a card surcharge added at the invoice is a legal problem in California while a cash discount is not, how a financing partner has to appear on the contract, what a $10,000 cash payment triggers with the IRS, and the one habit from Phase 1 that all of it depends on: every dollar, by every method, into the business account, the same day, tied to an invoice number.
What the full lesson covers
- Accept cards and ACH from day one; the customer who can pay on the spot pays on the spot, and a collections problem is usually a customer who was told "we'll send an invoice."
- Price the job with the cost of card acceptance inside it. Adding a card surcharge at the end that was not in the quoted price runs into Civil Code 1770(a)(29), which requires the offered price to include all mandatory fees; a discount for cash or check is the lawful way to reward cheaper payment.
- Payment method does not change the contract law: the deposit cap, no payment ahead of the work, and no payment before completion on a service call all apply to a card authorization the same as to a check.
- Financing through a partner must be stated on the contract under "Finance Charge," separately from the price; you are arranging a loan, not making one, and PACE programs have their own enrollment rules.
Unlock the full lesson
This is the public summary. The full lesson has the method, the worked cases, the checklists and the templates:
- All in-depth lessons, exam prep and After the License
- 1,200+ practice questions
- AI tutor (100 messages included)
- 18+ hours of audio lessons
- Full-length practice exams
- Pass guarantee
More lessons in Contracts and Getting Paid
- 1The home improvement contract (B&P 7159): every required element, the exact notices, and the three-day right to cancel
- 2The deposit cap: $1,000 or 10 percent, whichever is less, and progress payments that cannot exceed the work. CSLB's most common citation
- 3Service and repair contracts (B&P 7159.10): when the short form applies, what it must say, and how a service call falls out of it
- 4Subcontracts with GCs: the twelve clauses to read, what to strike, and what to negotiate