Offer Financing and Still Make Money
Are you worried that you won’t make money if you offer financing?
Financing is a great thing to offer to homeowners. According to the 2016 American Home Comfort Study, homeowners who use financing spend a little bit more than homeowners who use other forms of payment. However, financing programs, like FTL Finance, do have certain fees associated with them that you, as a contractor, have to pay. This can deter many contractors from offering financing.
Luckily, we have a simple formula you can use to price your job so that you never lose money when a homeowner asks for financing.
- Look at your sales and determine the percentage of your tickets that are financing. The average is 25 – 30%.
- Next, determine your cost to finance (i.e. dealer fee). You should use an average of all of the fees associated with the different finance programs you offer.
- Last, take the percentage from step one and multiply it by the percentage from step two to determine the amount that you should add to EVERY ticket to cover the cost of financing. Even if a customer pays with cash or check, add this percentage to the ticket.
Example
- Percentage of Tickets Financed : 30%
- Dealer Fee : 5.5%
- 0.30 x 0.055 = 0.0165
This means that for every ticket, you should add 1.65% to the final ticket price.
Hopefully, this simple formula can make financing seem less intimidating.
Do you already offer financing? Are you planning on offering financing in the near future?
