I just got off the phone with Kevin Cross of accept-by-phone and Lawbby. His partner, Chris Rempel sent me an email a few days ago detailing their accept-by-phone service, and they wanted to touch base. Good thing they did, as I must have opened the email quickly and dismissed it as one of the many affiliate programs I see every day that have nothing to do with anything I’m interested in. My name must be on a list somewhere identifying me as a guy that will hawk any product to anyone, any time.
Well, that’s not really what I’m about. (The preceding sentence is sponsored by Duff Beer. Drink Duff)
So anyway, back to what I was talking about. I was sitting at my desk drinking a Mountain Dew, responding to some emails, when my Tadiran Coral phone rang. I immediately took off my Sony headphones and pushed pause on my Slipknot CD.
**********end of sarcastic commentary***********
It was Kevin Cross, and he told me about their accept by phone service. And I honestly love the idea, as I would use it myself in a heartbeat. When I take on a client, my usual process it to get half of the project’s fee up front, and I get the rest upon completion. However, 99% of the time, it takes a few days to have the check written and processed. So it usually takes a full week before I have the check in my hands, then I have to deposit it. And because I won’t start working on a project until I have the money in my account (I learned that the hard way), that makes it at least a week between agreement and starting the work.
Sometimes that’s fine, as it gives me time to finish one project before moving on to the next. But honestly, what a pain.
If I used the accept by phone service, I could just call a number, fire off the client’s credit card number, and be done with it.
So my question is this: Would solos and small firms be interested in this? I can see how bigger firms would have no problem doing their own credit card processing, but for the little guy, that can be more of a hassle than it’s worth. I honestly think that this service is a good idea.
By the way: I want to make it clear that I am in no way being paid to endorse accept by phone. I am not an affiliate, I just thought this may be useful.
Popularity: 9% [?]
August 21st, 2006 at 3:30 pm
From an article first published in The Florida Bar News back in 2001:
Every week I speak with attorneys who have trouble reconciling the conflicts in the relationships they have with clients: Creditor and Advocate.
They call me on the telephone and they invite me into their offices for on-site consultations. They tell me of their troubles and ask me for help. I (was) a Practice Management Advisor with The Florida Bar’s Law Office Management Assistance Service (LOMAS) and these are my
stories:
I visited “John” in his Orlando office. He called me to ask for help. He was working harder than ever but never seemed to take home enough
money. He thought his expenses were too high. John was even considering letting a secretary go whom he was sure, was taking office supplies home
for her kids. (Office supplies typically represent less 1% of a law firm’s annual budget.)
ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Clients pay us to take on their problems, we are not supposed to pay for them!
Once John understood the importance of screening potential clients in a professional manner to weed out the potentially bad clients, he was ready to think about business. The first thing we had to address was the ridiculous level of old & dusty accounts receivable that were indirectly costing him money each month.
One of the reasons for John’s unhappy condition were his conflicting feelings. These feelings were never discussed in John’s professional responsibility course during law school. Instead, John learned the hard way how really difficult it is to serve someone as both their creditor and their advocate. These two roles have inherent conflicts.
John eventually decided to require all of his clients to make one lump-sum deposit to his trust account to cover the entire cost of his services, up-front. John discovered that more clients than he might have expected actually had the money to do this & for the others he now offers them the option to pay by credit card. Now John can fight like crazy to advance his clients’ interests and protect their rights and he let’s Visa or Master Card worry about being the client’s creditor.
Not only does this arrangement remove the inherent conflict, allow John to do a better job for his clients and eliminate costly accounts receivable problems, it even makes the client’s life a little easier.
Attorney Tracy Griffin, President of Attorney Card Services (727) 341-2323 (ACSINC@DIGITAL.NET) observes: “Contrary to what many attorneys think, clients who have not paid their bill do feel uncomfortable communicating with their attorney/creditor. It’s no fun for either the attorney or the client to talk about a case or matter when they both know about, and are trying to politely avoid the subject of past due bills.”
Accepting Credit Cards Will Make Your Firm More Profitable When John decided to get serious about wanting to be a more profitable, ethical and professional lawyer he made the decision to focus first on properly managing his law firm. John realized that despite what he had been earing and repeating for years, it really is possible to budget a case or matter ahead of time with an adequate degree of accuracy in all but the most complex contentious cases. Better yet, John realized that if he over-budgeted he could always impress the client when he returned some of their unused money and if he under-budgeted he was usually much further ahead of the game than when he used to ask for retainer deposits at random. Best of all though, by investing the time to budget a case in the beginning, John found that he was able to be more pro-active in case or matter management and he could virtually eliminate the worst part of
being a lawyer: collections.
John also recognized that requiring clients to make a large lump-sum deposit into his trust account to cover all anticipated fees and costs has the effect of dramatically increasing firm income:
1. There is less tendency to write-down the bill when you already have the money sitting in your trust account.
2. There is less tendency for the client to negotiate down the bill when it’s already paid.
3. Collections are far more timely, i.e. reduced (or eliminated) accounts receivable. This improves firm cash flow and actually reduces
firm overhead.
Think about it: You have your own credit card bills, car loan, line of credit or home mortgage all of which are charging you every day for the
use of their money. If your client owes you $1,000 for three months, you are in effect borrowing money from your own highest interest rate creditor in order to be able to afford to loan that money to your client at no interest!
In the past, John would do the work and send a bill to the client at the conclusion of the representation. After three months, he would often end up writing the bill down 10% from $7,500 to only $6,750 just to get some money flowing in. After three months, the $6,750 really ended up benefiting John the equivalent of only $6,402 after the discount and
interest expense. $7,500 vs. $6,402 = $1,098 or 15% reduced revenue.
If John let this happen in only half of his cases each year and he regularly collected 1,500 hours per year, John could have taken a entire month off of work and still had the same income had he simply gained control of his A/R.
Respectfully,
RJON ROBINS
http://www.HowToMakeItRain.com
Helping Lawyers In Small Firms Make ALOT More Money!
January 16th, 2007 at 3:25 am
interesting article.
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April 3rd, 2009 at 10:06 am
As a small business owner, I recognized value in the Accept-By-Phone service due to the mobile nature of my business, and the convenience of billing credit cards on the fly. The service worked well, but the 4% transaction fee and five business day wait for funds deposit were not acceptable, so I opted to close the account. That was on January 8th. For the last four months, I have been trying to close this account, which charges a monthly fee of $5.00. Kevin Cross has been largely unresponsive. I would be hesitant to recommend this service to anyone because they really fall short on customer service, and the fees are cost prohibitive. It seems like your typical one-man show at Accept-By Phone.
May 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Another more reliable option is Touch-pay, http://www.touch-pay.com. Their monthly fee is a little higher at $9.99 but the setup fee is much lower than the $79 and the percentage per transaction is much lower as well. They also have an option that allows a business to upgrade to a more advanced swipe terminal or web option if needed. I would recommend them to anyone.