It is 9 p.m. The report is finished, and the check the client promised at the door never appeared. You can send the report and trust that the money follows, or hold it and wait for a phone call from an agent who needs it tonight. Neither feels good, and you make that choice more often than you’d like.
Most inspectors who put off taking cards do it because of the fee. That is worth a second look, because the fee is the smallest number in this problem. Before you choose home inspection software with online payments, it helps to see what a card payment really costs, what an unpaid inspection costs, and what the software has to do to make the trade worth it.
What it costs to take a card
Stripe, the processor many inspection programs use, publishes its rate: 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards. On an inspection fee, that works out like this.
| Inspection fee | Card cost | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| $350 | $10.45 | $339.55 |
| $450 | $13.35 | $436.65 |
| $600 | $17.70 | $582.30 |
| 20 inspections a month at $450, every one paid by card | $267.00 | $8,733.00 |
So a busy month of card payments costs $267, a little under 3% of what you bill. It is a real expense, and it is fair to want it back. But look at the other side before deciding.
What it costs not to
One $450 inspection that never gets paid wipes out the card fees on 33 that did. One. At 20 card payments a month, that single loss is more than a month and a half of fees, and that is before counting the evenings spent on reminder calls.
One card fee beside one unpaid inspection
The deal falling through is exactly when it happens. A buyer who backs out after reading your report has the report, has no closing, and has no reason left to think about your invoice. The inspection did its job for them. Getting paid for it now depends on their goodwill.
That is the real argument for online payments. It is not that cards are convenient, though they are. It is that the payment and the report can be tied together, so the question “did they pay?” is answered before the report opens, every time, without you standing guard over it.
What to look for in home inspection software
Taking a card is the easy part; any payment app can do it. What matters when you compare inspection software is how the payment is connected to everything else.
The report opens when the payment clears
This is the one that changes your evenings. The client pays, the report unlocks on its own, and nobody had to check a bank app or send a second email. If the software takes payments but you still release reports by hand, you have a card reader, not a system. Ask to see what the client sees: they should land on a page with their report waiting and a way to pay right there.
Paid first, then the report
- 1Client opens the linkFrom an email they already read
- 2Pays by cardOn a phone or a computer
- 3Report unlocksThe moment the payment clears
The pay link is already in the emails they open
A payment request sent by itself is one more message to ignore. The emails a client does open are the appointment confirmation, the reminder the day before and the one that says the report is ready. The pay link belongs in all three. A client who pays from the confirmation has settled up before you arrive, which is the best version of this.
Checks, cash and agents who pay still work
You will always have a client who hands you a check, an agent who covers the inspection for a buyer, and a commercial customer who pays on an invoice. Software that only understands card payments will hold a report that has been paid for. You need to be able to mark an inspection paid yourself, and to turn the payment requirement off for one report without turning it off for all of them.
The money lands in your account
Find out where a payment sits between the client’s card and your bank. The better arrangement is a payment account in your own name: you see every transaction, the payouts come to you on the processor’s schedule, and a refund is something you do yourself in a minute.
You choose who covers the fee
Back to the $13.35. Some inspectors absorb it as a cost of getting paid on time. Others build it into their prices: to keep the full $450 on a card payment at that rate, the price would be about $464. Either is reasonable. What you want is software that lets you decide, and that does the arithmetic across your whole price list so you are not editing fees one by one.
Get paid before the report opens, with JetInspect
In JetInspect, card payments are part of the appointment and the report, and they are optional. If you turn them on, your client pays by card online and the report unlocks the moment it clears. Clients get a pay link with the confirmation, the reminder and the published report.
The money goes to your own Stripe account, and refunds are made there. You can mark any report paid or unpaid yourself, and Require payment can be switched on or off for a single report. One setting, “Cover card processing costs in my prices,” raises your posted prices so you still net the price you entered; leave it off and you absorb the card cost.
Try JetInspect risk free for 30 days. Set up your services and prices, turn on card payments, and run your next few inspections through it before you pay anything.