I'm sorry if this has been covered already, but I don't know what I'm looking for, so its hard to know if I'm asking a Q thats already been A'd.

How do you recieve payments from your clients? I mean, deposits. do they pay you via credit card? or cheque? whats the fastest safest way that you prefer to be paid by, and how would I go about setting up that form of payment?

I'd love to hear your answers, but keep it as simple as possible for me please? thanks allot!

Joseph

We pretty much take any form of payment: cash, check or credit card. We have a merchant account and an actual terminal to accept credit cards. I would say that more than 50% of our customers pay with credit card. Most of the rest pay with check and occassionally we get a cash order.

I only accept checks (cash occasionally, but I'd rather not have that kinda cash on hand). Toyed with the idea of a credit card account but I don't see enough demand for it at this time.

Hey Joseph!

Great question! For the first two years of our business, we were a cash/check only operation. And to be totally honest, not many clients asked to or needed to pay cash. Most would simply mail a check (retainer) along with the contract when they booked. But I *think* what you are really asking is what sort of system do you need to setup to accept those payments?

I guess it goes without saying that you'll need to build the basic infrastructure to be able to accept check payments: a bank account registered to your business (hopefully, I'm not insulting you here), and an accounting system to track your incoming payments. QuickBooks is incredibly affordable, and you can be up & running very, very quickly. Additionally, most accountants offer remote support for the program.

If you don't have one already, you'll want to look into establishing your Federal Employer ID Number, and getting all of the proper business/corporate paperwork for your city & county. You can probably find an accountant to handle this for you (typically runs between $400 & $750). Again, I hope I am not insulting you here!

We tracked most of our accounting data manually for the first 8 months of our business, and that has cost me hours & hours of time in years past trying to track down information about a client's previous payment amount, calculating the balance due on a contract, and especially when it comes to tax time, calculating sales figures! Yikes! So I can't say enough about building a good system from the get go.

When we added credit cards, it was primarily in response to our retainer going up, and combining that with the fact that our packages were going up, more of our clients were asking about credit card payment options.

It is actually incredibly easy to get setup to accept credit cards, and we have had absolutely zero issues to date. Many photographers will be able to share some horror stories about charge backs, and things of that nature, so I guess we have been quite fortunate thus far.

Here is a thread from a few days ago that might be helpful:
http://www.opensourcephoto.net/forum/index...st&p=109488

If you do decide to accept credit cards, you might want to have a simple contract in place. Attached is the one I shared the other day!

Hope this helps!
~ Charles

very helpful! thanks allot, especially you charles have a good day!

I believe you can accept CC payments through Paypal as well.

Cash, check and credit card via Paypal. I try to make it as easy as possible for clients to pay me.

I've had several clients pay me through Paypal. Great thing is, they don't need a Paypal account to use the service, just an email address.

Another selling point I use for CC payment is that it allows my wedding clients to secure me immediately.

Plus, they get fraud protection by paying with a CC.