The Problem: Electricians Complete the Work, Issue the Certificate — Then Wait Weeks to Get Paid
Your electrician finishes an EICR inspection at a rental property. They've spent two hours testing every circuit, documenting the results, and producing the certificate. The landlord isn't on site — they never are. The certificate gets emailed along with an invoice. And then the waiting begins.
A week passes. Nothing. Your office sends a reminder. The landlord replies: "Sorry, been busy — I'll sort it this week." Another week. Another reminder. The payment eventually arrives 23 days later, by which point your electrician has completed dozens more jobs and your bookkeeper has added another row to the growing spreadsheet of outstanding invoices.
This pattern is particularly acute in the electrical trade because so much of the work is tied to certification and compliance. An EICR, an Electrical Installation Certificate, an EPC — these are documents that trigger payment, but the document and the payment are disconnected. The electrician does the work, issues the certificate, and then a completely separate payment process kicks in. That gap between "work done" and "payment collected" is where money gets lost.
When your team of 6 electricians is completing 4–5 jobs each per day, that's 25+ payment collections happening daily. If your process relies on sending invoices and waiting for bank transfers, even a 20% late-payment rate means 5 unpaid jobs piling up every single day. Within a month, you're carrying a significant balance of completed work that hasn't been paid for — while still covering wages, van costs, materials, and tool replacements.
Emergency callouts add another dimension. A power failure at 10pm, a tripped consumer unit that won't reset, a burning smell from a socket — the customer is desperate when they call. Your electrician goes out, diagnoses the fault, makes it safe. By the next morning, the urgency has evaporated, and so has the customer's motivation to pay promptly.
Your Options: How Electrical Contractors Can Take Payments
Card Machines
Card machines are the traditional portable payment solution. Your electrician carries a terminal — usually a compact Bluetooth device paired with their phone — and the customer taps or inserts their card after the job is done.
For a one-person electrical business, a card machine from SumUp or Zettle is a reasonable setup. The devices cost £20–50 upfront, monthly fees are low or zero, and transaction rates sit around 1.69–1.75%. It's simple and familiar to customers.
The problems appear when you have a team. Six electricians need six card machines. That's six devices to purchase, charge, maintain, and replace when they inevitably get damaged bouncing around in tool bags next to wire strippers and conduit cutters. Monthly costs multiply — even at £20/month per device, that's £120/month in hardware fees alone.
Then there are the practical issues that are especially relevant to electrical work. Your electricians often work in basements, loft spaces, and commercial plant rooms — exactly the places where mobile signal is weakest. A card machine that can't connect is just a paperweight. Bluetooth pairing drops. Batteries die mid-shift because someone forgot to charge the device overnight. The receipt printer jams.
For high-value electrical work — a full rewire at £4,000, a three-phase installation at £6,000 — the percentage fees also sting. At 1.75%, a £5,000 job costs you £87.50 in card machine fees. Some electricians absorb this cost; others try to pass it on, which creates awkward conversations with customers.
Bank Transfers
Bank transfers are the default for many electrical contractors, especially for commercial and landlord clients. No fees, no hardware, and the money goes straight to your account. In theory.
In practice, bank transfers rely entirely on the customer's willingness and memory. Your electrician emails the invoice with your bank details. The customer has to open their banking app, enter the sort code, account number, amount, and reference — all correctly. Every step is friction, and every friction point is a chance for delay.
Reconciliation is the hidden cost. When 6 electricians are doing 5 jobs a day, that's 30 payments to track. Bank transfers arrive with vague references — "electrics" or "J Smith" — that don't obviously match to a specific job. Your bookkeeper spends hours each week matching payments to invoices, chasing missing payments, and working out which "Smith" paid for which job.
For commercial clients on regular retainers or property management companies with monthly schedules, bank transfers work fine. For one-off residential customers? They're a gamble on human follow-through.
Invoice + 30-Day Terms
Invoicing with payment terms is standard for commercial electrical contracts. If you're doing office fit-outs, shop installations, or maintenance contracts for facilities management companies, 30-day terms are expected and generally honoured (eventually).
For residential work and smaller commercial jobs, 30-day terms are a cash flow anchor. You've paid your electrician for the day. You've covered the materials — cable, consumer units, sockets aren't cheap. Your van's on the road burning diesel. All of that money goes out immediately, while the payment sits in a spreadsheet labelled "due in 30 days."
Late payment in the electrical trade often correlates with the nature of the work. Compliance-driven jobs — the landlord who needs an EICR to satisfy their letting agent, the homeowner who needs a certificate for a house sale — have a deadline that motivates the booking but not the payment. Once the certificate is issued and the letting agent or solicitor is satisfied, the financial urgency disappears for the customer.
PayPal and Online Payment Services
Some electrical businesses use PayPal invoicing or request payments via Venmo, Cash App, or similar services. The benefit is speed — most customers have at least one of these apps installed. The downsides are fees (PayPal charges 2.9% plus a fixed fee) and professionalism. A PayPal.me request from "Dave's Electricals" doesn't carry the same weight as a branded payment page.
There's also a dispute risk. PayPal's buyer protection can work against service businesses. A customer who decides three weeks later that they're unhappy with some aspect of the work can open a dispute and potentially claw back the payment, leaving you to fight it through PayPal's resolution process.
Payment Links
Payment links address the specific timing problem that electrical businesses face. The moment your electrician completes the work and issues the certificate is the moment payment should happen — and payment links make that possible.
Your electrician finishes the EICR, generates the certificate, and sends the customer a text message: "Here's your electrical certificate and payment link for £180. Thanks for choosing [Your Company]." The customer opens the link, sees a branded checkout page, enters their card details, and pays. Your electrician gets a notification on their phone. Paid. Done. Moving to the next job.
No hardware in the van. No waiting for bank transfers. No chasing invoices. And crucially, the payment is collected at the exact moment the customer is most satisfied — they've just seen the certificate, they know the work is done, and paying feels like a natural final step rather than a separate chore they have to remember later.
For team-based electrical businesses, payment links scale without multiplying costs. Whether you have 3 electricians or 15, each one sends links from their own phone. Your per-transaction cost stays the same. No devices to distribute, charge, maintain, or replace.
How Payment Links Work for Electrical Contractors
The electrical trade has specific workflows where payment links fit naturally — more so than many other trades, because electrical work so often concludes with documentation that the customer needs to see.
Scenario 1: EICR completion. Your electrician inspects a property, tests every circuit, and produces the EICR report. They send the customer (or landlord) a message with two things: the certificate PDF and a payment link for £150. The customer opens the certificate, sees the satisfactory result, and pays immediately. The certificate and payment arrive together — no gap for procrastination.
Scenario 2: Consumer unit replacement. A homeowner's fuse board needs upgrading to a modern consumer unit with RCBOs. The job takes a full day. Rather than handing over an invoice and hoping for a bank transfer, the electrician sends a payment link for the agreed £650 while walking the customer through the new board. "Here's how everything works, and here's the link to settle up." Paid on the spot.
Scenario 3: Rewiring — progress payments. A full house rewire might run £4,500 across five days of work. Rather than one large invoice at the end, your electrician sends payment links at each stage: £900 deposit before starting, £900 after first fix, £900 after second fix, £900 after testing and certification, and £900 on final completion. The customer manages the cost in stages, and you maintain cash flow throughout the project.
Scenario 4: Emergency callout. A customer calls at 11pm — power is out across half their house. Your on-call electrician is dispatched. Before they arrive, your office (or an automated system) sends a payment link for the £125 callout charge. The customer pays while waiting for the electrician. By the time your electrician arrives, the callout is already paid — they can focus entirely on finding and fixing the fault.
Every payment link generates a record in your dashboard. Your office sees all outstanding links, completed payments, and which electrician sent what. End-of-month reconciliation takes minutes instead of hours.
Taking Payments Over the Phone
Electrical businesses handle a fair volume of phone-based bookings and confirmations. Emergency callouts especially — the customer calls, describes the problem, and wants someone out as soon as possible. This is a natural payment moment that most electrical businesses currently miss.
The traditional approach to phone payments involves asking the customer to read out their card number, expiry date, and CVV while someone in your office types it into a terminal or payment page. This is a PCI compliance violation waiting to happen. Your staff have heard and potentially recorded sensitive card data, which puts your business at risk.
Voice Checkout provides a secure alternative. During the phone call, the customer is transferred to an automated payment line. They enter their card details using their phone's keypad — the DTMF tones are processed securely, and your staff never hear or see the card information. Once payment is confirmed, the customer is connected back to your team to confirm the booking.
For electrical businesses, this is most valuable in two situations. First, emergency callout deposits — collecting the callout fee during the initial booking call means your electrician is guaranteed payment before they even get in the van. Second, quote confirmations — when a customer calls back to approve a quoted job, collecting the deposit during that conversation locks in the commitment and funds the materials purchase immediately.
What to Look For: A Payment Checklist for Electrical Contractors
Choosing a payment solution for an electrical business involves some trade-specific considerations beyond generic "small business" advice. Here's what matters.
- No per-device costs. If you're running a team, the last thing you need is a recurring monthly fee for every electrician. Payment links that work from any smartphone eliminate hardware costs entirely. The money you save on 6 card machines pays for itself in the first month.
- Flexible amounts for deposits and staged payments. Electrical work ranges from a £90 socket installation to a £10,000 commercial fit-out. You need to send payment requests for any amount — deposits, stage payments, final balances — without being locked into invoice-only workflows.
- Real-time visibility for your office. When your team is out on jobs across a city, your office needs to see payment status in real time. A dashboard showing sent, viewed, and completed payments — broken down by electrician — replaces the guesswork of "did that customer pay yet?"
- Works in poor signal areas. Electricians work in basements, loft spaces, risers, and plant rooms. A payment link only needs to be sent once — the customer receives it on their phone and can pay whenever they have connectivity, even if your electrician is three floors underground when they send it.
- Professional, branded experience. Your electrical business has a reputation built on certification and compliance. The payment experience should match — a professional branded checkout page, not a PayPal request or a handwritten invoice.
- Certificate and payment link pairing. The ability to send documentation and a payment link together is uniquely valuable for electrical work. Look for a solution that lets you include a message or attachment alongside the payment request, so the customer receives their certificate and payment link as a single communication.
- Reasonable fees on high-value work. Rewires, commercial installations, and three-phase work can run into thousands of pounds. A fee structure that charges a flat percentage — with no monthly device fees or minimum transaction requirements — usually works out cheapest for electrical businesses with varied job values.
- Phone payment capability. If your office handles emergency calls and booking confirmations, secure phone payment (Voice Checkout) lets you collect deposits during the conversation rather than sending a separate request afterwards. This reduces the gap between commitment and payment.
For most electrical businesses with a team of contractors, the ideal setup combines payment links for on-site and remote payment collection with Voice Checkout for phone-based bookings and deposit collection. This covers every scenario in the typical electrician's week — from emergency callouts to multi-day rewiring projects — without hardware overhead or PCI compliance concerns.