Operations
Payment collection: 45 days to 12
A service business owner with 3 employees says he worked 70-hour weeks as the bottleneck for every question, invoice, and booking. He set up five plain systems: a website chat widget and tiered replies for inquiries, automatic invoices and staged payment reminders, self-service booking with reminders, a timed lead nurture sequence, and a review request flow after each finished job. The stack is ordinary tools: a chat widget, QuickBooks, Stripe, Calendly, email sequences, and Zapier, under $100 a month in total.
How it wentAfter 90 days he reports weekly hours down from 70 to 45, response time from 4 hours to 2 minutes, and payment collection from 45 days to 12 days, with late payments down 70%. Lead conversion rose from 2% to 15% and reviews from 2 to over 10 a month, per the owner.
Try it · based on the source's workflow
Set up a payment follow-up system for [business name] in [invoicing tool]. When an invoice passes its due date, draft a friendly reminder on day [7] with the invoice number, amount, and payment link. Draft a second, firmer reminder on day [14]. On day [21], stop and flag the account for me to call myself. Show me every draft before it sends, and give me a Friday list: invoices sent, reminders drafted, and accounts waiting on me.
A starting template based on the workflow the source describes. Review it before you use it; you are responsible for what it does.