Collecting Interac e-Transfers without losing track

Many tiffin customers in Canada pay by Interac e-Transfer. It is fast, free for the customer, and needs no credit card. Students and newcomers can use it too. If you don't take e-transfer, you can lose customers.

But for meal plans, e-transfers are hard to keep track of. That is why month-end can take hours.

Why it is hard to match payments

A card payment comes with the customer's name on it. An e-transfer comes with whatever the sender's bank sends you. For example:

• The email is not the customer's. It is an old Gmail, a husband's or wife's account, or a family member paying for them. `psharma.92@` could be any of four Priyas.
• The name is the full legal name. Your list says Sunny. The transfer says Sukhwinder.
• The amount does not match a plan. They sent $300 for a $302 plan. Or one payment for two months. Or a round number, with the rest as credit.
• There is no message. The message is empty, or says "food".
• Autodeposit skips a step. The money goes straight into your account. You never get a moment to note what it was for.

Now do that for sixty customers. You end up scrolling your banking app at 11pm, checking a notebook, trying to remember who said they already paid.

What mistakes cost you

Mistakes go both ways. Both cost you, and one is hard to see:

• You ask someone to pay who already paid. It is embarrassing. It can hurt a relationship, and your business depends on trust and word of mouth.
• You miss someone who didn't pay. They keep eating, and you don't notice. You lose that money, and it can go on for months.

What helps

Ask for a reference

Ask customers to put their phone number or customer number in the e-transfer message. When they do, matching is easy. Not everyone will. It is still worth asking.

Write down the sender's email once

The first time money comes from `psharma.92@gmail.com`, write that email next to the right customer. People usually pay from the same email every time. So the hardest payments to match become easy. This is the most useful tip here.

Give each plan a different price

For example, if your one-week and two-week plans are $75 and $145, not $75 and $150, the amount alone can tell you which plan it is for.

Match payments every week, not every month

Twelve payments to match takes about twenty minutes. Ninety takes a whole evening, and you will keep putting it off. How often you do it matters more than how.

Offer card payment to customers who want it

You don't need to stop taking e-transfers. Just take fewer. A customer who pays by card renews on their own. You never have to match their payment. Even a few customers on card make month-end shorter.

Or let Tiffinware match them

Tiffinware matches Interac e-transfers to the right customer's meal plan. The first time money comes from an email you don't know, it remembers that email for that customer. After that, payments from it match on their own.

Customers who pay by card are charged on each renewal. One screen shows who has paid, who is due and who to remind. The payments report shows money in by card, e-transfer and cash, with refunds and GST collected. Your accountant will want this at tax time. There is more in GST/HST for tiffin businesses.

It is $99 a month. Unlimited customers, no commission on your orders, and a 14-day free trial. You can open the demo and look at the payments screen with sample data, without signing up.

Your customers will keep paying by e-transfer. The goal is to stop losing an evening every month, and to stop delivering food nobody paid for.