Today's email is going to be short and sweet, because I'm going to share with you one of the simplest ways to solve a common cause of cash flow issues school owners face.

When I started my first dojo, I was plagued with slow and late payments. I had a billing company that would send out invoices to all my clients, and then the clients would send in checks, which would get cashed and eventually find their way into my account, minus the billing company's cut.

This was an incredibly inefficient way to collect tuition. Eventually I switched to invoicing clients myself to cut out the middle man, but I still had issues with late and non-payers.

So, I switched everyone in my school over to electronic credit card or debit card billing. Not EFTs, but only payment by credit or debit card.

It took a while for people to get used to the fact that they couldn't bring in their payment whenever they wanted anymore. But once I got every single student in my school on electronic billing, suddenly my tuition collection (and cash flow) issues went away.

There are a million ways to set this up today, because the technology for accepting payments and moving cash from customer to vendor has improved drastically. The thing is, you don't need a third-party company to handle this for you. 

In fact, you can probably do it yourself through the online payment gateway your credit card processing company provides you. It's the way I have done it for years, and it's often the least expensive and hassle-free method to set up recurring payments for your students.