The balance you are still waiting for
A full re-roof. You took a deposit when the customer booked, and agreed a stage payment when the scaffold went up and the balance on completion. The deposit came in. The stage payment was mentioned to the customer on site and they said they would transfer it. The balance request went by text the day the scaffold came down.
Three weeks later, the balance is still outstanding and the customer has found a small thing they want looked at first. Nobody is sure whether the stage payment was ever received.
Why roofing payments drift
Payment stages are agreed at quote time and then left to memory. The people who know when a stage is reached, the gang, are not the people who ask for money, the office. And requests are informal, so customers treat them as informal.
- Payment stages are in the quote but not tracked anywhere.
- Stage completion is not reported to the office on the day.
- Requests are texts or conversations on site.
- Bank transfers arrive with vague references and are matched late.
- Reminders depend on someone's courage and time.
What drifting payments cost
Cash flow is the obvious one. Roofers pay merchants and scaffolders before customers pay them, and slow stage payments stretch that gap. Money unclaimed at a stage is harder to collect later, especially once the scaffold is gone. And chasing is a job nobody in the office enjoys, so it gets put off.
There is a pattern many roofers recognise: the customer who pays the deposit promptly and then goes quiet on the balance once the roof is watertight. By then you have little to bargain with, and the only tool left is persistence, which costs time.
The payment stage flow we build
- The quote sets out payment stages you define, such as deposit, scaffold up, roof stripped, completion, with amounts or percentages.
- When the customer accepts, the deposit request is sent with a card or bank payment link through Stripe or your payment provider, and the terms they accepted.
- Stages are linked to job events: the scaffold handover, the gang lead marking a milestone, the completion sign-off.
- When a stage is reached, the request goes out automatically or after the office approves it, as you choose, with a short progress update and photos.
- Payments are matched to the job as they arrive, whether by link or bank transfer read from your bank feed.
- Unpaid stages get polite reminders on a schedule you set, and after that, the item is passed to a named person to call.
- Everything is reconciled into Xero, Sage or QuickBooks against the job.
| Stage | Triggered by | Sent with |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit | Quote accepted | Terms and payment link |
| Scaffold up | Scaffold handover recorded | Photo and next steps |
| Midway | Gang lead milestone | Progress photos |
| Completion | Completion sign-off | Completion photos and any guarantee info |
Payment stages and terms are your commercial decision. We make sure they are followed consistently.
What it feels like afterwards
Customers expect each request because it was set out when they accepted, and it arrives with photos of the work it pays for. The office sees at a glance which jobs have unpaid stages. Reminders go out without anyone having to steel themselves. And the balance is requested while the gang is still on site, not weeks later.
Is money slipping away like this?
- Stage payments are asked for on site or by text.
- You are unsure whether a stage payment was received.
- Final balances are chased for weeks.
- Bank transfers are hard to match to jobs.
- Nobody likes doing the chasing.