Pillar 1 — Watch the Money
Deposits at booking.
Payment at completion.
AR follow-up automated.
4-step automated AR follow-up sequence. Most aged invoices paid within 7 days of first contact. Collections is the second-strongest revenue recovery in any owner-operated shop — money you’re already owed, sitting in QuickBooks, just waiting to be asked for.
THE PROBLEM IN YOUR BOOKS
15-25%¹of home-services AR sits aged 60+ days. The longer it sits, the less you’re going to collect.
Most operators stop asking. Not because they don’t want the money — because the conversation gets harder every week, and there’s always a fresh job to chase instead. So the invoice sits at 60 days, then 90, then 120, until it gets quietly written off in your head if not on your books.
The math you’re not running: a $1M–$5M home-services shop has $30,000 to $150,000² sitting in 60+day AR right now. Dead capital. Money you’ve already earned, sitting in QuickBooks, slowly losing value as it ages further.
Maximus’s Collections agent doesn’t write anything off. It runs the cadence, asks for the money, and keeps your books clean.
WHAT COLLECTIONS DOES
Four steps from booking to fully collected. You don’t touch any of them.
Collections runs the same four steps on every job — emergency, standard service, recurring customer, callback. Deposit captured at booking. Payment captured at completion. Aged AR worked through the cadence. Reconciliation to QuickBooks daily. The job-to-paid loop closes itself.
- 1
Captures deposit at booking.
During the Receptionist’s intake, Collections takes a deposit (configurable amount or percentage of estimated job value). Secured before the truck rolls. No more “the customer cancelled and we ate the trip.”
- 2
Captures payment at job completion.
The tech marks the job complete in your CRM. Maximus sends the customer a payment link by text — same channel they’re already using. Most paid before the tech leaves the driveway. The 7-days-of-first-contact stat lives here, not just in the aged-AR cadence.
- 3
Runs 4-step AR follow-up cadence.
Day 30 reminder → Day 45 second touch → Day 60 escalation notice → Day 75 final notice before formal collections handoff. Plain English. Customer-respectful. Never robotic, never threatening, never embarrassing. Most aged invoices clear at the Day 45 second touch (paid by Day 47, hitting the “7 days of first contact” stat from a different angle).
- 4
Reconciles to QuickBooks daily.
Every deposit captured, every payment received, every aging invoice that just rolled into a new bucket — tagged in your QuickBooks for clean books. Maximus runs the AR aging report; you see the numbers in your morning briefing. The kind of discipline a buyer’s accountant would want to see.
THE PROOF
$12,400 collected from aging invoices in 90 days. Most paid within 7 days of first contact.
Temperature Pros Orlando deployed Collections as the second agent in their Maximus team — right after the Receptionist. The starting AR snapshot included invoices dating back 60, 90, even 120 days — money technically on the books but mentally written off.
90 days later: $12,400 collected from those aged invoices. Median time to payment after the first SMS contact: 7 days. Total admin hours spent by the team chasing payments: zero. The Collections agent ran the cadence; the operator stayed in the field.
$12,400
collected from aging AR / 90 days
7 days
median time to payment after first contact
$0
admin hours spent following up
WHAT THE CADENCE LOOKS LIKE
One real invoice. Four touches. Paid at Day 47.
The hardest invoice to recover is the one that’s been sitting at 60+ days. The customer’s silence is built up; awkwardness compounds with every passing week. The Collections agent runs the same respectful 4-touch cadence whether the invoice is $187 or $1,870. Here’s what Day 30 through Day 75 actually looks like, on a real invoice from Temperature Pros.
Day 30 — Reminder · 10:14 AM
“Hi Sarah, this is Mike at Temperature Pros — just a friendly reminder that invoice #1042 for $487 (the AC repair on March 12) is now 30 days past due. You can pay anytime at this link: pay.tp.com/1042. Let me know if there’s an issue I can help with.”
Day 45 — Second touch · 2:03 PM
“Hi Sarah — circling back on invoice #1042 ($487). Let me know if you need a different payment plan or if there was a problem with the work. Happy to talk it through. pay.tp.com/1042”
Day 60 — Escalation notice · 9:48 AM
“Hi Sarah — invoice #1042 ($487) is now 60 days past due. We need to resolve this. Reply with a question, request a payment plan, or pay here: pay.tp.com/1042. After Day 75 the invoice goes to formal collections.”
Day 75 — Final notice · 11:31 AM
“Final notice on invoice #1042 ($487, 75 days past due). To avoid third-party collections + reporting, please pay or contact me by Friday: pay.tp.com/1042.”
[Customer paid on Day 47 after the second touch. AR cleared to $0. Total operator hours: zero.]
Maximus’s Collections agent never sounds robotic, never threatens, never embarrasses. It asks for the money the way a respectful operator would.
THE BOUNDARIES
Routine collections. Automated. Disputes and edge cases come to you.
Collections handles the standard cadence — the invoices that just need someone to ask, respectfully and on time. Anything that needs human judgment — disputes, payment plans, commercial accounts, legal — gets flagged with full context so you can handle it personally.
✓Collections handles
- Deposit capture at booking (configurable amount or percentage)
- Payment-link delivery at job completion (SMS or email)
- 4-step automated AR follow-up cadence (Day 30 → 45 → 60 → 75)
- Reconciliation to QuickBooks (every deposit, payment, aging-roll tagged)
- Aging AR report generation (in your morning briefing)
- Customer-respectful tone (never robotic, never threatening, never embarrassing)
→Maximus flags for human approval
- Disputed invoices (customer claims work wasn’t done or was defective)
- Payment plan requests over your configured threshold
- Repeat non-payers (3+ aged invoices outstanding from same customer)
- Commercial accounts with custom net-terms agreements
- Anything legal: liens, small claims, third-party collection handoff
- Refund requests or invoice corrections
The hard conversations stay yours. The respectful reminders that just need running don’t.
Who you’re buying from
Nirav DoshiOwner, Temperature Pros Orlando · CDP partner since 2012
Collections was the second agent I deployed at Temperature Pros, right after the Receptionist. The 4-step cadence ran on my actual AR — invoices that had been sitting for 60+ days, customers I’d given up on. $12,400 in 90 days from invoices I’d written off in my head. The cleanest test of “does this team actually work” is whether it recovers money you’d already mentally lost.
You’re not buying a one-man-show. Maximus is built and operated by Complete Data Products — a 35-year-old technology company my brother and I bought in 2012. We’ve shipped AI and data systems for Fortune 500 clients since long before AI was a buzzword. Tech lead Jason Darling has been at CDP for 22 years — predates my ownership; institutional memory you can’t buy. Operations lead Kait Kluz joined 8 years ago when we rebuilt around AI; she’s the person making sure the team ships what we sell. Founding 20 customers get me directly on application and during onboarding; the org is here for everything after.
Frequently asked
Questions contractors ask about Collections.
Does it sound aggressive or pushy?
What happens if a customer disputes the invoice?
What payment processors does it integrate with?
Can it handle payment plans?
What if a customer asks to talk to a human?
When the money actually comes in.
Money you’re already owed. Recovered automatically.
Collections is included in every Maximus subscription — Founding 20 ($497/mo or 8% recovered, whichever’s higher) or Standard ($697/mo or 10%). The math has to work or you don’t pay. 90-day money-back guarantee on the entire team.
Founding 20 — limited·$497/mo or 8% recovered·90-day money-back·48-hour deploy
No more chasing. No more awkward calls. No more invoices written off in your head.
Footnotes
- ¹ 15-25% of home-services AR aged 60+ days. Aggregated from B2B service-business AR benchmarks (similar provenance to /agents v2.1 footnote ¹). Range varies by trade and shop size; 15-25% reflects a commonly-cited midpoint for home services in the $1M–$5M revenue band.
- ² $30,000–$150,000 dead capital range. Calculation: 60 days of revenue at $1M–$5M annual revenue × 15-25% aged-AR rate. Low end ($30K) ≈ $1M shop × 15%. High end ($150K) ≈ $5M shop × 25%. Per-shop number varies with seasonality and AR management discipline.