The problem
Stuck on checks
Before Nickel, AHR’s payment workflow revolved around physical checks. Nearly 95 percent of homeowners mailed payments after the job was completed — creating delays, back-and-forth follow-ups, and operational gaps.
Half of the time customers forget to mail the check. Or they send it without a signature. Or we need it re-issued.
Keith Hannigan, Production Manager
Credit card payments weren't much better. American Home Renewal processed cards through Payment Depot, which charged a $500 annual fee plus variable rates that ranged anywhere from 2.8 percent to over 7 percent, depending on card type and month. The unpredictability made it nearly impossible to forecast costs.
The bigger issue was timing. Because American Home Renewal takes no deposit, the final payment needs to be collected immediately upon completion. But installers couldn't accept payments in the field. Managers couldn't give field staff access to QuickBooks. And customers increasingly asked for wires or EFT, but there was no fast digital way to collect them.
On top of all that, AHR's project structure made invoicing a nightmare. A typical job involves a base contract, change orders, permit fees, reductions, add-ons, and inspection adjustments. QuickBooks would generate multiple invoices, but sending three to five separate invoices to a homeowner wasn't realistic. And when syncing went wrong, it pushed bad data into QuickBooks that someone had to clean up manually. They needed a payment layer that could combine invoices, hide invoices, and keep everything clean.
The solution
Paid at the door
After a detailed demo with the CEO and production team, American Home Renewal ran a full test of Nickel Plus — linking their main business bank account, setting up user roles, and enabling both ACH and card options for customers.
Nickel replaced Payment Depot's unpredictable fee structure with a simple 2.9% flat rate. No variability, no surprises. American Home Renewal can toggle who pays the card fee (the business or the homeowner), and there's no annual platform fee beyond Nickel Plus. The result: they eliminated variable processor rates, the $500 Payment Depot annual fee, and surprise interchange jumps.
Nickel gave American Home Renewal something they never had before: a way to collect payment the moment a job is done. With a universal payment portal and scannable QR code, installers can now accept ACH or card payments on-site. No QuickBooks access required, no waiting for checks in the mail. Customers consistently choose digital payment now, and the team spends far less time chasing down checks, re-issuing them, or fixing missing signatures.
American Home Renewal's multi-invoice projects used to create a mess in QuickBooks. Nickel solved that by letting them disable QuickBooks sync by default, delete test or duplicate invoices, and prevent job-site payments from polluting their books. When the standard QuickBooks output didn't match their setup, the Nickel team wrote custom code to make it work. That kind of quick response time and near-instant resolution stood out.
