The short answer
Put a booking page on your own website where a customer picks a size and days, types the address, signs your rental agreement and pays by card. Limit it to your service area and the number of jobs you can handle a day, and have each order land on your dispatch board for the office to check.
By American Dumpster Software, the software built by American Roll-Offs, a roll-off company in Jacksonville, Florida. Updated .
Why take bookings online
Homeowners often look for a dumpster in the evening, after work, when your office is closed. If they can't book then, they may try the next company. A booking page answers the phone for you at any hour, and the order comes in with the address, the size and the payment already in it.
What a good booking page asks
- The size, with a picture and what fits in it, and the days included.
- The address, checked against your service area.
- The day they want it, with your closed days and full days blocked.
- What's going in it, if your prices depend on the material.
- Their name, phone and email.
- The rental agreement, signed, and the payment terms agreed.
- The payment, by card.
Keep it short. Every extra question loses a few customers.
Protect yourself
Online orders still need the same protection as phone orders. Show the included days and tons, the price per day and per ton over, and your cancellation rule before they pay. Have them sign the agreement, and keep a signed copy with the order.
Set a service area, so nobody books a drop off two counties away, and a limit on online orders per day, so a busy weekend doesn't overbook your trucks.
Discount codes and busy days
Discount codes let you run an offer for a contractor group, a neighborhood or a slow month without changing your prices for everyone. Give each code an end date, so an old offer doesn't keep working for years.
On busy days, it's better to show a day as full than to take an order you can't run. A customer who picks the next day is happier than one who gets a call saying the truck won't come.
Taking the card
Take card payments through a payment company in your own name, so the money goes straight to your bank. Keeping the card on file, with the customer's agreement, lets you charge the tons over or extra days later without chasing them.
How the software does it
In American Dumpster Software, online booking is part of the same program: your sizes, pictures and online prices, a service area by distance from your yard, a limit per day and discount codes. The customer signs your agreement with a finger or a mouse and gets a signed PDF; the card goes through your own Stripe account, and Charge the card on file handles later charges. It goes on your website as a button, a pop-up, a page or a link, and a WordPress plugin is included. Each order lands on the board. See it in the demo and on Pricing.