February 10, 2026
CUSTOMER STORYFergus
But here’s what the spreadsheet shows: $80,000 sitting in unpaid invoices. Some from last week, some from last month. A few you’ve completely forgotten about.
And every time you need to order materials or make payroll, you’re doing the mental arithmetic – trying to figure out which customers will actually pay this week so you can cover what needs covering.
For Cam at SureFence WA – a fencing and retaining wall business operating across Perth’s northern suburbs with 12 staff – this wasn’t a hypothetical. It was Tuesday.
These aren’t theoretical. These are the actual mistakes we see fencing contractors make when implementing payment systems:
1. Making Deposits “Preferred” Instead of Mandatory
If deposits are optional, customers won’t pay them. You’ll still get last-minute cancellations. You’ll still carry the risk on materials.
The fix: No deposit = no booking. Frame it as standard business practice. “We secure all jobs with a 20% deposit.” Done.
2. Letting Field Staff Handle Money Decisions
Your crew leader is brilliant at building fences. They’re probably not brilliant at invoice management, pricing consistency, or tracking variations.
The fix: One person owns all invoicing. Crews report completion, variations, and photos. Office handles the money. Clean separation.
3. Waiting Days to Send the Invoice
Every hour you wait after job completion is an hour for customer memory to fade and urgency to drop. By Friday, they’ve moved on. Your invoice is just another piece of admin they’ll “get to.”
The fix: Same-day invoicing as standard. Job complete → invoice sent within hours. Strike while the fence is fresh.
4. Only Offering One Payment Method
Some customers want to tap their phone. Some prefer bank transfer for larger amounts. Forcing one method creates unnecessary friction.
The fix: Offer both. Card/mobile wallet as the default (faster), bank transfer as the alternative. Let customers choose what works for them.
5. No Automated Reminders
If you’re relying on someone remembering to manually follow up unpaid invoices, invoices will slip through. Guaranteed.
The fix: Set up automated reminders (Day 3, Day 7, Day 14). Let the system do the first round of chasing. Humans only step in for exceptions.
6. Absorbing card fees without covering it in your margins
Card fees on $500K annual revenue = $7,500-10,000. That’s real money coming out of already tight margins.
The fix: Pass the surcharge to customers. It’s standard practice. Customers who value convenience will pay it. Those who don’t can use bank transfer.
7. Not Tracking the Numbers
If you don’t measure average payment time, deposit collection rate, and overdue invoices, you can’t see what’s working or where the bottlenecks are.
The fix: Add a admin line item to cover fees. It’s standard practice. You’ll notice how quickly your invoices get paid by making this one change.
The thing is, Cam wasn’t running a dodgy operation. His crew did quality work. His quotes were fair. Customers were happy with the work.
The problem was the payment system. Or really, the lack of one. 10% of invoices were unpaid and having to be chased, and even good payers would result in a week’s delay before the cash hit the bank.
What changed? They implemented a proper payment workflow leveraging Fergus Pay – deposits, integrated card payments, centralised invoicing – and the results came fast. Within weeks, 60% of their invoices were getting paid within a day or two instead of languishing for a week or more. Manual chasing dropped off a cliff. Cash flow stabilised.
This is how they did it, and how you can too.
Most tradies default to bank transfers because they feel “free.” No merchant fees. No setup. Customer already has the bank details from the quote.
But in a high volume trades business, bank transfers quietly destroy cashflow and come with hidden costs. Even when the customer intends to pay quickly, delays creep in.
Even when customers have the best intentions, bank transfers take time:
That’s the best case. More realistically, “I’ll do it tomorrow” becomes next week. And next week becomes the invoice you forgot existed until you’re doing a reconciliation two months later and find it sitting there, unpaid.
Here’s the maths that nobody talks about:
Let’s say only 10% of your invoices need manual follow-up. Sounds manageable, right?
For Cam with his 20 jobs a week that’s a full working week every year just hunting down payments. Not quoting new work. Not improving your systems. Not taking a day off. Just chasing. How much would that work out to be for you?
In a business model built on one-day jobs and tight margins, even small payment delays compound fast. Here’s what a normal week looks like:
This is where an unreliable payment process turns from an inconvenience into a real risk.
“If one team leader doesn’t turn up, it can affect up to 60 jobs over three weeks. You can’t afford for cash flow to be another thing that goes wrong.”
SureFence WA didn’t just flip a switch and hope for the best. Using Fergus Pay, SureFence WA implemented three changes specific changes that work together. Miss one, and the whole thing falls apart.
The shift wasn’t about adding card payments as an option. It was about making them the expected, normal way to pay.
SureFence WA enabled Fergus Pay, which integrates Stripe directly into Fergus job management system. No separate payment portal. No new software to learn. Payments are automatically reconciled back to the job, no matching, no spreadsheets.
The invoice link includes instant payment options:
The result? Customers pay while they’re still standing in their backyard looking at the finished fence. Three taps on their phone. Done.
“People just pay on their phone – boom, boom, boom – and it’s done. Before Fergus Pay, payments could take three or four days. Now, many come through within a day.”
This is where many trades businesses go soft. They make deposits “preferred” or “encouraged.” Which means optional. Which means useless.
SureFence WA implemented a mandatory 20% deposit policy with deposits via Fergus. Not negotiable. Not waived for “good customers.” Every single job.
Why it works:
“The deposit definitely locks them in. Before deposits, we had people cancel after materials were ordered.”
This was the organisational change that made everything else work.
Because Fergus Pay lives inside Fergus, the office manager has real-time visibility without extra admin.
What this prevents:
“If everyone’s got their finger in the pie, it’s chaos. One person managing invoicing works best for us.”
These aren’t projections or estimates. This is what actually happened after SureFence WA implemented the three-part system:
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Payment speed | 3-4 days average | 60%+ within 1-2 days |
| Manual invoice chasing | ~10% of invoices | Minimal (exceptions only) |
| Outstanding debt | ~$80,000 at peak | Significantly lower |
| Cancellations | Regular issue | Near zero |
| Customer experience | Manual bank transfers | Tap-and-pay preferred |
The shift happened fast because the system removed friction at every step. Customers found it easier to pay immediately. The office stopped spending hours on follow-up. Cash flow became predictable instead of a weekly guessing game.
SureFence WA went from $80,000 in outstanding invoices to 60% of payments arriving within 48 hours. Without adding admin staff, or chasing customers harder. They fixed the problem by implementing three changes with the help of Fergus Pay:
The system took days to implement, not months, and results showed up almost immediately.
“If you don’t have that payment system, it feels like something’s missing. Give it a go. You’ve got nothing to lose.”
For trades businesses operating across Perth’s northern suburbs – or anywhere in Australia – faster payments aren’t just convenient. They’re what keeps cash flow predictable when crews call in sick, weather delays jobs, and materials prices shift.
You can keep chasing invoices and hoping customers remember to pay. Or you can make it dead simple for them to pay immediately and move on with your day.
Let’s talk about the thing that stops most tradies from implementing this: merchant fees.
Card processing typically costs 1.5-2% of the transaction. On a $2,000 job, that’s $30-40.
SureFence WA’s approach? Pass the surcharge to the customer. It’s standard practice in Australia, completely legal, and here’s the surprising part – customers don’t care.
“If people are happy to pay the surcharge and it means we get paid faster, it’s worth it. They pay the extra surcharge for it.”
Why customers accept it:
The alternative: you can also absorb the fee, and even increase the job cost fractionally or add an admin fee, and get paid today rather than spending an hour next week chasing an invoice that might take another week to clear?
TThis isn’t a six-month transformation project. You can have the core system running by Friday. Here’s the realistic timeline:
If you’re already using Fergus for job management, enabling Fergus Pay is straightforward:
Get everyone on the same page:
By the following Monday, you’ll have real data showing whether the system works in your business. For most fencing operations, the results show up immediately.
These aren’t theoretical. These are the actual mistakes we see fencing contractors make when implementing payment systems:
If deposits are optional, customers won’t pay them. You’ll still get last-minute cancellations. You’ll still carry the risk on materials.
The fix: No deposit = no booking. Frame it as standard business practice. “We secure all jobs with a 20% deposit.” Done.
Your crew leader is brilliant at building fences. They’re probably not brilliant at invoice management, pricing consistency, or tracking variations.
The fix: One person owns all invoicing. Crews report completion, variations, and photos. Office handles the money. Clean separation.
Every hour you wait after job completion is an hour for customer memory to fade and urgency to drop. By Friday, they’ve moved on. Your invoice is just another piece of admin they’ll “get to.”
The fix: Same-day invoicing as standard. Job complete → invoice sent within hours. Strike while the fence is fresh.
Some customers want to tap their phone. Some prefer bank transfer for larger amounts. Forcing one method creates unnecessary friction.
The fix: Offer both. Card/mobile wallet as the default (faster), bank transfer as the alternative. Let customers choose what works for them.
If you’re relying on someone remembering to manually follow up unpaid invoices, invoices will slip through. Guaranteed.
The fix: Set up automated reminders (Day 3, Day 7, Day 14). Let the system do the first round of chasing. Humans only step in for exceptions.
Card fees on $500K annual revenue = $7,500-10,000. That’s real money coming out of already tight margins.
The fix: Pass the surcharge to customers. It’s standard practice. Customers who value convenience will pay it. Those who don’t can use bank transfer.
If you don’t measure average payment time, deposit collection rate, and overdue invoices, you can’t see what’s working or where the bottlenecks are.
The fix: Add a admin line item to cover fees. It’s standard practice. You’ll notice how quickly your invoices get paid by making this one change.
Be professional but firm. Explain it’s standard practice to protect both parties. If they still refuse? They’re probably not your ideal customer anyway. Letting them walk saves you from future payment headaches. SureFence WA reports near-zero pushback once deposits became standard operating procedure.
The tool matters less than the integration. What you need is payments flowing directly into your job management and invoicing workflow—not sitting in a separate system that creates more admin. Fergus Pay works because it’s built into the platform. Other software can work too, but avoid anything that treats payments as a bolt-on afterthought.
20-30% is standard for fencing. High enough to cover materials and demonstrate commitment. Low enough not to create affordability barriers. SureFence WA uses 20% successfully. If you’re doing higher-value work (commercial, large retaining walls), you might go 30-50% on jobs over $20K.
Frame it as choice, not penalty. “You can pay via bank transfer at no extra cost, or use card/mobile wallet for instant payment with a small processing fee.” Most customers choose speed over saving $5-10. It’s the same surcharge they pay everywhere else—petrol stations, restaurants, other tradies.
No. Honour commitments made before the policy change. Apply deposits to all new quotes from your launch date forward. Clean cut-off prevents awkward conversations and maintains trust with existing customers.
Works for both. Commercial clients expect deposits and professional payment systems – if anything, they’re surprised when you don’t have them. You might adjust deposit percentages for larger projects (30-50% for jobs over $20K is common), but the principle holds across all work types.
Stop drowning in admin & paperwork. Start focusing on the jobs that make you money.
Our 20,000+ trades businesses have slashed their admin, are getting paid faster, and are finally enjoying their weekends again.
