Does anyone know if it is not legal to post a list in the waiting area of balances due? I’m a one-woman operation and I constantly get interruptions from clients who insist upon taking up another client’s time to ask what is their balance due. Of course I’m glad they want to pay, but it takes up time from the next client! I thought posting monthly balances would be an easy way to address this since they can’t seem to bring their bill with them. Also, I think it would be a good way to encourage timely payment and help them avoid late fees. What do you think?
I’ve seen businesses in my area post list of “deadbeats” (bounced checks, etc). I think knowing your location will help anyone with legal advice to offer.
If there’s a chance of embarrassing clients or revealing info that rightly should be confidential I sure wouldn’t post it where others could read it, legal or not.
Why not make the list and keep it handy where only you can see it? Seems to me it would only take a few seconds to answer a request for balance due that way.
Of course I have no idea what your business is and don’t follow how one client can impinge on another’s time. If you’re wearing all the hats, then how is it reasonable to expect that client A won’t call or come by with a question while you’re talking to client B? Seems to me a system to address this would have been one of the first things to work out.
In some industries and areas (the medical field in the US, for example) you’d be in violation of confidentiality rules just by listing names on a document like that. A lot of people would consider it a violation of their privacy even if it was legal.
You could do something where you list a customer number that isn’t identifiable information, but then you have to count on customers remembering that number.
There are plenty of ways to make billing privately available with secure logins through the Internet. I use is Intuit Billing Solutions, though I’m not necessarily recommending it - there are as many annoyance as features. If you already have a merchant service provider, start by asking them what their options are. If you have a website and a tech person to ask, see what they can rig up.
wouldn’t it be nicer if Liyhann could use some Google App for Managing Customers in a Small Office type of website that would let them just log in and examine their own accounts? Chances are that such things are already available (if not from Google per se) and other Dopers could fill in the details.
Thanks for the info and suggestions. I am a piano teacher in the Washington, DC area. It sounds like no one knows anything about the legality of such a situation, and I’m suspecting that since it shouldn’t be embarrassing to be listed, it wouldn’t be a legal issue.
I do have a system: Call or email with your questions. I suspect this is a guise to get “free” time out of the next student’s lesson to talk about their kid’s progress
I may look into that and see what the products’ competitors are like.
re: other options. My sole income is from teaching kids piano and I have no second household income. I don’t take credit cards. I can’t afford a merchant service provider. Even paypal pushes my margins…
You could change your system to be just “Email with your questions”.
Or, don’t answer the phone when you’re with a client, and let the answering machine get it.
Or, if it’s really not by phone or email, but it’s people leaving asking questions in the time period of the next person, add five minutes of in-between time to handle questions.
So apparently it’s parents asking questions at the end of their kid’s lesson, and that timeframe impedes on the next kid’s lesson? I would think scheduling a bit more time between lessons might help, as ZenBeam suggested, but at some point you’ve got to assert that you are no longer available for anything but the next kid’s lesson. If you started kid A’s lesson on time, then parent A should certainly understand that you’ve got to start kid B’s lesson on time rather than be talking to parent A. Develop “office hours” or somesuch for such conversations, if need be.
By “free” time are you suggesting that dealing with these questions is a consultation for which you would charge, and thus discussion with parent A ought to occur during kid A’s lesson time rather than during kid B’s lesson time? If so, I’d say that’s something you need to make crystal clear to the parents, and develop a system to enforce it. Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but that strikes me as rather odd if it’s just a few minutes, something that should be calculated into the fees as a cost (your time) of doing business.
Maybe I’m not helping much because I don’t get exactly what the problem is that you think could be solved or at least helped by posting account balances.
My father does this with compies of bounced checks at his garage. The only thing he does to protect anyone’s privacy is obscure the routing and account numbers with a permanent marker.
You might try simply assigning each customer an ID, e.g. Bob = Customer A, Susie = Customer B and so on.
Then post a list of what’s owed:
Customer A $50
Customer B $75
etc.
I don’t see anyone’s feathers getting ruffled.
You could create an ID such that people could figure out their own if they forgot, like street number plus 2nd and third letters of their last name.
I teach music part time, still work in the music biz, but only have one night of students these days.
I make it a policy that all financial and scheduling issues be handled by email only, this provides a backup in case of issues or misunderstandings. In addition, I have two billing options, students/parents pay a minimum of 4 lessons at a time (after the trial lesson) with payment due either the first week of the month, or the 15th. That way all balances due are the same, unless they choose to pay more than one month at a time.
Problem solved. That said, the issue seems to me (as mentioned above) more of a ploy to get information on the child’s progress. I solve that issue with some minor notetaking during the lessons (mostly goals/progress/issues) and send an email to each parent/student monthly with the last months issues and accomplishments. Takes little time, but I only have 5 students right now, it could take longer if you have 30-40…
managing parents is the name of the game, and a real pain in the ass. Luckily, I mostly teach jazz and theory, so my students tend to be self-selecting for interest and ability.
ETA: Meerkat’s solution is great. You could even use that code system to post it on your website.
Thanks for all your suggestions and I’m really sorry that I can’t claim that my problem is solved. I guess my situation is too complicated to express succinctly here so that you can have the complete info. (I’m loathe to go on and possibly frustrate the good people who are trying to help me out here.) And actually, I only hoped to know if anyone knew whether there would be a legal issue with doing what I wanted to do.