Why contractors waiting on checks are waiting longer than they think
By Yan Payments
The gap is bigger than it looks
Ask a contractor how they get paid and most will say checks, even though most of them would rather not. One industry survey found that contractors prefer ACH over checks by roughly two to one, yet still receive about 67% of their payments by check and only around 21% by ACH. The preference and the reality don’t match, and the reason is usually that nobody set up an easier option.
The gap matters because the two methods aren’t close in speed. A paper check typically takes 7 to 10 days to fully clear once it’s mailed. ACH transfers usually settle in 3 to 5 business days. On a $15,000 kitchen remodel invoice, that’s potentially a week of float sitting in a client’s account instead of yours, for no reason other than habit.
What a check actually costs you
The sticker price of a check is zero. The real cost isn’t.
Once you count the time spent printing or writing it, driving to deposit it or waiting for the mail, the bank’s processing, any returned-check handling, and the bookkeeping to reconcile it against the invoice, the fully loaded cost of a single check runs somewhere between $10 and $16. An ACH payment, by contrast, typically runs $2 to $4 in processing cost, and most of that work happens automatically.
If you’re invoicing 20 clients a month, that’s a difference of roughly $160 to $240 a month, before you even count the value of your own time or the cash flow benefit of getting paid faster.
A worked example
Say you’re a contractor doing $40,000 a month in invoiced work, split across 15 invoices, and historically about 70% of clients pay by check.
| All checks (current habit) | Electronic invoicing + ACH | |
|---|---|---|
| Avg. days to payment | 8-10 days | 3-5 days |
| Processing cost per payment | ~$195/month (15 x ~$13) | ~$45/month (15 x ~$3) |
| Time spent chasing/reconciling | Several hours/month | Largely automated |
| Cash sitting unavailable mid-month | Higher, due to float | Lower |
The dollar savings on processing alone, roughly $150 a month in this example, is real but modest. The bigger win is getting access to your own money 3 to 7 days sooner, consistently, every invoice, every month. For a business managing payroll or material costs against incoming receivables, that’s the difference that actually changes how tight a month feels.
Why this isn’t just “send an invoice by email”
A PDF invoice emailed to a client doesn’t solve the underlying problem, because the client still has to go write a check or manually push a bank transfer. The behavior only changes when paying electronically is the easiest option on the page: a “Pay Now” button on the invoice itself that lets the client pay by ACH (or card, if they prefer) in a couple of clicks, with the payment landing in your account without either of you doing manual reconciliation.
That’s the actual shift that moves someone off checks: the easier path and the faster path have to be the same path.
Getting started without overhauling how you bill
You don’t need to rebuild your invoicing process to get most of the benefit:
- Start with your highest-dollar or most frequent clients first; that’s where float matters most.
- Keep check as an option for clients who insist, but make electronic payment the default you send.
- Track how many days late/early payments land for a couple of months before and after, so you’re not guessing at the impact.
We built our invoicing tool around exactly this: send an invoice, the client pays by ACH or card from a link, and the money lands in your account without either of you touching a bank branch or a stamp.
There’s a knock-on effect too. Contractors who float payroll or materials purchases against invoices they haven’t collected yet often end up borrowing against that gap, whether that’s a line of credit, a merchant cash advance, or just carrying a balance on a business card. Shaving a week off how long your money sits in someone else’s account reduces how much of that borrowing you actually need in the first place.
The bottom line
Checks aren’t free, they’re just invisible. The cost shows up as processing fees you don’t see broken out anywhere, days of float you’ve stopped noticing, and time spent chasing payments that could be automatic. Switching a handful of your biggest clients to electronic invoicing is usually enough to feel the difference in your bank balance within a month.
If you want to see what electronic invoicing looks like for your business specifically, talk to a payments expert.
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