How Offering Financing Helps Home Service Pros Close Bigger Jobs

A homeowner needs a new HVAC system. The technician quotes $9,000, and the homeowner says they need to think about it. Three weeks later they have patched the old unit with a $600 repair that will fail again next summer. The job was never lost on value; it was lost on the lump sum. Financing is how home service businesses stop losing big-ticket work to the size of the check, and the data on its impact is consistent enough that not offering it leaves real revenue on the table.

Why Financing Lifts the Average Ticket

The mechanism is simple psychology. A customer evaluating a $9,000 expense asks whether they have $9,000. A customer evaluating a $160 monthly payment asks whether the comfort and reliability are worth $160 a month, a far easier yes. Financing reframes the decision from affordability to value, and that reframing is what moves close rates on large jobs.

The numbers back it up. Wisetack and Synchrony, two of the larger players in home-improvement consumer financing, both report that contractors offering financing see average ticket sizes rise 20 to 30 percent. The lift comes from two places: customers approve larger scopes (the full system instead of the partial repair), and they approve work they would otherwise have deferred indefinitely. On big-ticket trades like HVAC, roofing, and repipes, that swing is the difference between a good year and a flat one.

What Financing Costs You

Financing is not free to the contractor, and understanding the cost is what keeps it profitable. Most consumer financing platforms charge a merchant fee of roughly 3 to 8 percent of the financed amount, deducted before you are funded, much like a credit card processing fee. The customer makes their payments to the lender; you are paid the job total minus the fee, usually within a few days.

Some platforms offer promotional structures, zero-percent or deferred-interest offers to the customer, where the contractor absorbs a higher merchant fee in exchange for a more attractive consumer offer. Whether that trade is worth it depends on your margins and your close rate, which is exactly why disciplined job costing matters here: you need to know your true margin on a job before you decide how much fee you can absorb. On a healthy big-ticket job, the larger close rate and ticket size almost always outweigh the merchant fee.

Which Jobs Should Offer Financing

Financing is not for every job. On a $180 service call, the merchant fee is pure cost and the customer simply pays. The impact concentrates on jobs above roughly $2,500, where the lump sum is large enough to cause genuine hesitation.

The highest-impact categories are the obvious big-ticket ones: HVAC system replacements, whole-home repipes, electrical panel upgrades, roofing, water heater and softener installs, and full remodels. The practical rule is to present financing on any job large enough that a customer might reasonably say they need to think about it. If the price is causing hesitation, the monthly payment is the tool that resolves it.

How and When to Present It

The biggest mistake is treating financing as a fallback you offer only after the customer balks at the price. By then the conversation has already turned negative. Instead, present the monthly payment alongside the total on every large estimate, as a neutral line item. A quote that reads "$9,200 total, or $162/month with approved financing" normalizes the option and lets the customer choose how to think about it.

This matters most on emergency calls. A failed furnace in January or a burst pipe is an unplanned expense the homeowner has not budgeted for, which is precisely when on-the-spot financing converts a deferral into an approval. Offering instant financing during an emergency lets the customer say yes to the proper repair instead of the cheapest patch, protecting both your ticket and the quality of the fix. Capture the job at the quote with a pricing tool, present the payment option, and pair it with a membership plan so the relationship continues long after the financed job is done.