TIMELY PAYMENTS - Don't Let Friendship Interfere with Paying your DWPS

Ahhhh....that lovely part of the dog walking business that most dog walkers loathe to deal with....collecting money.

Most of us (the GOOD ones, the ones you WANT helping out with your pets, anyway) got into this business not to "turn a profit" but because they love animals and wanted to find a way to work with them and be able to pay their bills doing it.  As it is, most of us make decent money, but our incomes are well below anything that would be considered "affluent" by any stretch of anyone's imagination.  Chances are very good that your DWPS (Dog Walker/Pet Sitter) makes significantly less than you do.  And they work many days and very long hours to make that "decent" income.  I promise you that your DWPS works far more days, hours, holidays and weekends than you do.  I don't know many DWPS's who can afford to have outstanding balances hanging around from clients who don't pay on a timely basis.

There is a tendency to become friendly - perhaps at times "too" friendly - with your DWPS. After all, they are providing a very personal service, coming into your home, they have your house keys, alarm codes and they are taking care of your furry/feathered/finned babies while you are gone.  In hiring them, you had to take an enormous leap of faith and place a lot of person-to-person human trust in them.  Sometimes they stay in your home.  Often, just due to nature of job and things that come up in life that necessitate hiring a DWPS, the DWPS will know things about your personal life that brings you closer together (crazy work hours, illness, death in the family, some other emergency situation etc.).  Over time, this can skewer the mutual perspectives, especially on the part of the client. The DWPS deals with it all the time and has presumably learned how to keep clearly delineated boundaries around the relationship, while still remaining caring and friendly towards both the client and their pets.  The clients, on the other hand, because this *is* a rather odd working relationship by most standards, can often cross over into perceiving the DWPS more as a "friend doing them a favor" than a service provider, and that's where the trouble starts.  This rings especially true when the client experiences some sort of crisis period that requires a lot of "above and beyond" from the DWPS - which is something most of us are more than willing to jump in and do in a time of need, not just to help the animals, but to also help the humans.

What I've found in the past is that it's never good business to DO business with a personal friend. It's also never good business to become too friendly and close with someone who is a client.  It's just human nature that the "business" aspect of the arrangment gets blurred; people can't help it.  And make no mistake about it: no matter how much you like your DWPS, no matter how much your DWPS likes you and your pets (they likely truly LOVE your pets almost as much as you do), at the end of the day, this IS a "Business Agreement".  Your DWPS is providing a service that you need, and you have hired them to do that.  The expectation you have of them is that they honor their part of the business agreement and show up as prescribed, do the job as outlined and provide quality care for your pets and quality customer service for you as a client with total honesty and integrity. But...YOU have a role in that business relationship too...and part of that, the MAJOR part of that is that you are supposed to PAY FOR THE SERVICE.  And you are supposed to pay in a timely manner, in whatever method is outlined by the DWPS at the initiation of the agreement.

When first hiring a DWPS you need to get full details on how they do their billing, how and when they expect to get paid and what are/are not acceptable  forms of payment.  The billing cycles can range from payment at time of service EVERY time, to payment on a weekly basis, pre-payments, payment on a monthly basis, or a billing system.  Most of the smaller businesses/sole proprietors/single employee services rely on a weekly billing system, collecting payment at time of service in person.  They aren't large enough to be set up to spend man-hours doing billing, accepting credit card payments and processing checks. Many of them work on a cash-only basis. You may think that's because they are trying to "hide" income, but my guess is most of the time it has a lot more to do with the problems that arise when they've tried to accept personal checks.  That is for another posting, to be sure.  Because the problems that come with accpeting personal checks are a DOOZIE.

I've often found it useful to equate paying me with a client's own job payment situation.  Really, it's the same thing. You may think you're the only one who "forgot" to leave payment on a Friday, but what if that happened at EVERY HOUSE that day, the same week? It's happened to me - on many occasions, and usually when I could least afford it.  It's tantamount to your DWPS not receiving a paycheck at all that week - and I don't know many who can manage like that these days. Your DWPS should be able to count on knowing when they will get paid based on the pre-arranged agreement they have with you; they shouldn't feel like it's always "up in the air".  How many times would you find it acceptable to have someone in your payroll or HR Department screw up payroll submissions, so that your check didn't arrive on payday or your Direct Deposit never went into your account?  Do you have bills automatically scheduled to come out based on that money being there?  How much would it mess up YOUR personal finances if you could never count on how much you were getting paid or when you could expect it?  Once you put paying your DWPS in that perspective, it should really ring home for you how important it is to take this issue seriously. You don't know who else on their schedule that week forgot to leave payment...don't be part of the problem.

The long and short of it is, if you agree to pay the DWPS in a prescribed manner on a prescribed schedule then DO IT.  They didn't forget to show up to take care of your pets, you shouldn't forget to pay them for it. If they tell you they can't accept personal checks, don't keep trying to slip one in with the excuse that you didn't have time to go to the ATM last night. If you've got them coming every day week after week, chances are you owe the same amount every week and knew all week long how much you were going to owe them and on what day it was due.  Why did you wait until 10:00pm the night before to have to go out to the ATM in the middle of a raging storm? (and of course, you DIDN'T go out to the ATM in that storm and are now running out the door leaving them a check, or no payment at all.)  Experience tells me that clients who can't get organized enough to remember cash payment aren't going to be any more organized about remembering to leave a check. And they are real head aches over the long term.

In summary, you've hired a DWPS to help you out. Hopefully, you've got yourself a really good one and want to keep them as much as they want to keep you as a client.  Follow the rules of the payment agreement, pay on time, pay in full, respect your DWPS as a business professional and you will never force them into the uncomfortable position of having to talk to you about..."money".  Because I can guarantee you, that's your DWPS's least favorite aspect of their job.  If you follow these guidelines you will maintain a good and amicable working relationship with them, and that's a good thing for you and your pets.

Suggestions:

*Make sure you are clear BEFORE you hire a DWPS what rates they charge, what types of payment they accept and when they expect payment for services. If you are not comfortable with their polices and procedures, find another service that better suits your needs.

*Stay organized!  Sit down on Saturday or Sunday for five or ten minutes and review your week. Determine how many visits your DWPS will be making and get payment ready to have on hand so that you can leave it the day it's due, rather than leaving to last minute and "forgetting" because you got too harried.  Put it in an envelope to have ready the day it's due.

*Approach paying your DWPS with the same diligence and respect that you expect from YOUR boss or HR department at YOUR job. 

*If you're traveling and you have a DWPS staying in your home or making numerous visits, leave payment before you go so they don't have to come back to collect or wait for it to show up in the mail..."whenever".  Make sure you are 100% clear before you leave what the charges/fees will be so that you know how much to leave.  They should be able to give you a concise breakdown of what's due based on what you've contracted them for.

*Respect the professional relationship you have with your DWPS and remain friendly, but stay aware of boundaries and don't get so personally involved with them that you lose sight of the business aspect - ie: PAYMENT.

*Don't take advantage of your DWPS's inherent caring nature (they likely have one, after all look at the business they are in!).  If they do a lot of "above and beyond" stuff for you during a stressful time or time of crisis, understand that at some point that will subside when the crisis level does and don't keep expecting that elevated level of "extra care" all the time. Don't get spoiled. And DON'T let it lull you into a sense that the DWPS has now become your close personal friend to such an extent that payment issues get overlooked and put on the back burner.  They aren't a friend or relative doing you a personal favor, they are a hired professional and they need to get paid for their services when it's due. Period.