Take payments through LakeOps, or run your own billing — both are fine
No, you don’t have to run your money through the software. Two modes, both first-class: a pay button on the completion email, or the completed-work report and collecting exactly the way you do today.
· 5 min read
A fair question from every shop that looks at field software: do I have to run my money through it? With LakeOps the answer is no. There are exactly two ways to get paid, both are first-class, and picking one is the only money decision setup asks of you. Plenty of shops run their own billing forever and never miss a thing.
Mode one: bill your customers yourself, exactly the way you do today, working off a report that lists every completed job. Mode two: switch on LakeOps Payments, and the completion email your customer already gets grows a button to pay. You can move between them later, either direction. Here’s what each actually looks like in a season.
Running your own billing
Either way, jobs complete and price themselves — the crew marks the last piece, the price list runs over what was done, and the number is on the job. If you bill yourself, your tool is the completed-work report: every job finished in a date range, grouped by customer and then property, each item on its own line so a six-section dock reads as six, with what’s been paid against each job.
Two views of it carry the season. Filtered to unpaid, it’s your receivables list on one screen. Filtered to one customer, it’s the document you send the association that wants something on paper — there’s a PDF for exactly that, and the CSV goes to your bookkeeper. Then you collect however you already collect: checks in the mail, cash at the landing, the card reader in the shop.
What comes in gets recorded against the job — amount, and how it was paid. A check handed over at the dock is not a second-class payment; nothing downstream asks which kind it was. Deposits and part-payments are just multiple rows against one job, and the balance reads the difference. The aging report, statements and reminders all work identically in this mode, because they read what’s owed, not how you collect it. If anything, the shop banking its own checks needs them more — there’s no bank feed keeping the record straight for you.
Switching payments on
Mode two starts with about ten minutes of plain questions — business name, tax ID, bank account. No codes to copy anywhere, nothing technical, no separate merchant application. When the account clears, the pay button appears on every completion page, and money goes straight to your own bank account.
The details are chosen for the size of the bills in this trade. The payment page is branded as your business, not ours — your customer is paying their dock company. Bank transfer is offered first, card second: on a $2,000 dock bill an ACH transfer costs a few dollars where a card costs tens, and customers don’t mind at all when it’s the default. The service fee is 1.0% per payment, shown as its own line so you always know what it was, with no monthly fee and no minimum — and billing your customers yourself carries no fee at all, which is why both modes stay honest options rather than one being the real one.
Customers who pay online can choose to leave a card on file for next time — their choice, made on their own screen, and they can remove it themselves from the same link. For twice-a-year customers it quietly ends the chase: the fall removal completes, the card is charged for the balance, and the same completion email goes out. Nothing is ever charged before the work is finished.
And the check at the landing still happens in this mode — some customers will always hand you one, and it gets recorded the same way. The modes describe the default, not a rule.
How to actually choose
Pick by where your collection time goes. If your customers pay promptly however you bill today, mode one changes nothing and costs nothing — keep it. If your evenings include chasing balances, matching checks to jobs, or re-sending bills that got lost, the pay button earns its fee by making the easiest possible moment to pay — the email with the photos in it — also the easiest possible place.
A common path: run a first season on your own billing while you learn the system, watch which customers drag, then switch payments on before the fall run. Switching later is one setup pass; switching off is one button, and every payment record stays where it was.
The part that doesn’t change
Both modes rest on the same foundation: the job completed the day the work was done, priced itself off your price list, and told the customer exactly what happened with photos to prove it. That’s what makes collecting easy in either mode — a bill nobody has questions about, arriving the day the work is freshest. How the money physically moves is the smaller decision, which is why it’s yours.
How getting paid works in LakeOps · LakeOps Payments, in detail