When my photography was a side hustle shooting weddings & families, it drove me crazy when my husband called it a hobby. He thought because I had a day job, I spent my weekends filling my hobby.

The thing is, we don’t charge people for a hobby. At least not our worth.

As a full time entrepreneur now, I have had a learning curve on some of the practises I implement in my business. One of the most important is making it easy for my clients to pay me. 

Most of my clients pay by e-transfer. I do have an option for credit card via PayPal, but as most pay a deposit on booking, and the balance on shoot day, e-transfer is the preferred way for both of us. 

I highly recommend it, if it fits into your own business. It will depend on your price point of course.

I also absolutely recommend you set up AUTO DEPOSIT.

I was just helping one of my people set it up. He had an e-transfer but the password was not accepted so he had to go back to the sender and re-ask. How inconvenient.

Plus the password was so generic, it could have been guessed by anyone (who won the Super Bowl is easily googleable).

To avoid this in the future, I walked him through setting up auto-deposit. It only took a few minutes. 

How to set up Auto Deposit

1. open your online banking and the specific account the money should go to. Pro Tip – your business account should be separate from your personal.
2. from the list on the right hand column of the account (this my vary) click the link to set up auto deposit
3. enter your email (for client consistency, also best if this is your business email) to be used to send funds
4. a verification code will be emailed to be entered to confirm feature. 
5. Get paid!

This was RBC (Royal Bank of Canada), so steps may vary for different institutions, but it is that easy. 

Why should you do this?

1. no more concerns about passwords
2. no more delayed payments
3. no more missed emails to confirm deposit
4. no more auto emails telling clients their payment is overdue, when really they sent it days ago.

It is part of your customer experience. Make it convenient for them. 

Have other tips you are looking for? Let me know, I will see if I can help.