How to Offer Financing as a Contractor (and What It Costs)

Here is how to offer financing as a contractor: sign up with a lender or financing platform, send the homeowner an application link, and the lender pays you while the homeowner pays the lender back. Your cost is a dealer fee, and published and reported fees run from about 2% to 15% of the amount financed, depending on the plan.

Contractor financing for customers, in this article, means a loan your customer takes out to pay for your work. If you’re after contractor lending for your own business, like a line of credit or trade credit, that’s a different job. Start at the hub for contractor financing topics.

My take, after years of selling leads to contractors and watching what vendors charge them: financing is a price you set, not a bill that shows up later. Decide who pays it. Offer it early, to everyone. And count your own results before you trust anybody’s close-rate number.

What offering financing costs you

Offering financing costs you one of three things: a dealer fee on each financed job, a flat membership, or nothing up front with the cost moved into the homeowner’s interest rate. Wisetack publishes its fees. It charges 3.9% on a standard loan and up to 9.9% when the homeowner gets 24 months at 0%.

What a dealer fee is

A dealer fee is the cut the lender keeps before it pays you. Hearth’s explainer gives a clean example. On a $10,000 job with a 5% dealer fee, you get $9,500. The homeowner still owes the full $10,000.

Hearth also notes that some lenders use the fee to bring down the customer’s interest rate. That’s why the 0% plans cost you the most. You’re paying the interest the homeowner isn’t.

What the published numbers say

The clearest fee ladder sits on the Arborgold help page for its Wisetack integration. Here’s what each plan costs you on $10,000 financed:

Wisetack plan	Fee to you	Cost on $10,000
Standard loan	3.9%	$390
6 months at 0%	4.9%	$490
12 months at 0%	6.9%	$690
24 months at 0%	9.9%	$990

Most other lenders don’t post their fees. Zentora Marketing, an agency that builds websites for roofers, reports that GreenSky’s annual report put its average fee at 6.47% across all merchants in 2021. Lower rates and longer promotions generally meant higher fees.

Across the market, the range is wide. One Click Contractor, an estimating software company, puts standard programs at about 2% to 4%. SundayBuild, a site written for homeowners, reports 4% to 15%. The difference is mostly the plan. Standard loans are cheap. Long 0% promos are not.

SundayBuild also says HVAC contractor financing and roofing contractor financing sit near the top of that range, 8% to 15%, because so many shops in those trades offer it. If you run an HVAC company, plan around that range.

No-fee platforms still have a price

“No dealer fees” is true on some platforms. It doesn’t mean free.

Hearth financing has no per-job dealer fee. Its page says financing is included with your Hearth membership. That membership has a price, and Hearth doesn’t list it on its product page, so ask before you sign. Acorn Finance charges contractors nothing. Lenders pay Acorn when a loan closes, and that cost lands in the homeowner’s rate instead.

Local lenders are a third route. Salal Credit Union says partners pay zero dealer fees on its standard program. Not every credit union works that way, but a call to yours costs nothing.

Who pays the fee

Somebody pays it. You have three choices: build it into your price, take it out of your margin, or take it out of the rep’s commission. Make that call before anyone on your team quotes 0%.

You usually can’t just add it to the bill. Wisetack’s terms, as listed on the Arborgold page, say you cannot pass its fee to customers as a surcharge. In an old ContractorTalk thread on offering financing, one contractor described his approach:

“While there is a cost to us, we would lose out on a lot of sales if we didn’t offer financing. We simply charge enough to allow for it.”

Charging financed customers more than cash customers is a gray area. Ask a lawyer who handles consumer credit before you set up two prices. And expect the question: SundayBuild tells homeowners the cash price is often 5% to 15% lower than the financed price.

Your financing options side by side

Contractor financing programs come in five types: a pay-per-job platform like Wisetack, a membership marketplace like Hearth, a free-to-you marketplace like Acorn, a bank or card program like GreenSky, Service Finance, Synchrony or Regions, and a local credit union. Here’s how the best contractor financing companies compare on what they cost you and how they work.

Option	What it costs you	Loan range and terms	Worth knowing
Wisetack	3.9% standard; 4.9% to 9.9% on 6, 12 and 24-month 0% plans	$500 to $65,000 for qualifying accounts; 3 months to 10 years	Soft credit check; pays you 1 to 3 business days after the customer confirms the job is done; no surcharges allowed
Hearth	No per-job dealer fee; flat membership, price set at sign-up	$1,000 to $250,000; 2 to 12 years; 18+ lenders; approvals down to 550 FICO	Funds go to the customer, who then pays you
Acorn Finance	$0 to you; lenders pay Acorn	$1,000 to $100,000; 2 to 15 years; 20+ lenders	Soft-check prequalification; some lenders do a hard pull once the customer picks an offer
GreenSky	Fee set per merchant; 6.47% average in 2021, per Zentora	Up to $100,000; 5 to 12 years	Staged draws; some owners report payout only after the homeowner signs off on completion
Service Finance	Fee schedule handed over at enrollment	Ask at enrollment	Owned by Truist; works inside ServiceTitan; pays after a signed completion certificate
Synchrony	Merchant discount, taken from your payout	Revolving project card; promos from 6 to 132 months	Card stays open for repeat jobs; watch deferred interest on promo plans
Regions Home Improvement (formerly EnerBank)	No fixed costs; dealer fees on some loan tiers	Installment loans, by loan tier	Typically funds within 24 hours after the homeowner confirms
Credit union dealer program (example: Salal)	$0 on Salal’s standard program	Set by the credit union	Needs a dealer form, income statement, balance sheet and license

Read the cost column first, then the payout column. Fees decide your margin. Payout timing decides whether you can make payroll. Synchrony contractor financing works differently from the rest: it’s a card, so a repeat customer can use it again, but promo plans can carry deferred interest that hits the homeowner if they don’t pay it off in time. Terms change, so get current numbers in writing when you enroll.

Which option fits a 1 to 10 person shop

Pick by how many jobs you’ll finance. If it’s a handful a year, a pay-per-job fee like Wisetack’s is easy math: on a $12,000 job, 3.9% is $468. If you’ll finance several jobs a month, price out a flat membership or a free-to-you marketplace. Then add a second option for customers your first lender declines.

That second option matters. One Click Contractor warns that with one lender, “if that bank tightens its credit requirements or declines your customer, the deal is dead on the spot.” Even by Wisetack’s own figure, its approval rate is around 70% to 74%. So between one applicant in four and one in three gets a no.

Here’s an example to show how fees hit margin. Say a $12,000 job runs at a 30% gross margin. That’s $3,600 in gross profit. These are made-up numbers; plug in yours.

• On a standard loan at 3.9%, the fee is $468. You keep $3,132.
• On a 24-month 0% plan at 9.9%, the fee is $1,188. You keep $2,412.

That’s the point of the whole article in one example. A dealer fee is a price you choose to pay to win a job. It makes sense when financing won you the job. On a job you would have won anyway, it’s money left on the table.

Check that you can sign up

Small shops can miss the sign-up bar. Through Arborgold, Wisetack asks for $150,000 in annual revenue, more than one year in business, residential work only, and a verified Google Business Profile with at least 10 reviews and a 4.5 average. One owner, quoted by Zentora, said many lenders want 12 months or more in business before they open their better plans. Credit union programs want your income statement, balance sheet and license.

Get three things in writing

Before you sign with any lender, ask for these on paper:

1. The fee on every plan, including each 0% and long-promo option.
2. When you get paid, and whether payment waits on the homeowner signing a completion form.
3. What the lender requires from you: setup costs, annual fees, chargebacks and cancellation terms.

Regions lists enrollment, annual, technology, transaction and chargeback costs among the fees that can apply. If a lender won’t put the answers in writing, move on to the next one.

How to offer financing as a contractor on every estimate

The best way to offer financing to customers is to mention it when you book the appointment and again when you give the price. Offer it to every customer, as one way to pay. Don’t save it for the moment someone says the price is too high. By then it sounds like a rescue, not an option.

Regions, in its guide for contractors offering financing, gives a script that works because it’s boring:

“The total project price is $14,500. You can pay directly or you can apply for one of the financing options available through our lending partner. Would you like to review those options?”

Regions also says to offer it to everyone, not just the people you guess need it. Picking and choosing creates compliance risk.

Be careful what you write on the estimate and in ads. Under the federal Truth in Lending rules (Regulation Z), businesses that aren’t lenders still have to follow the advertising rules when they advertise credit. As Zentora sums it up, an ad that states a monthly payment or “0% for 12 months” must also give the APR and repayment terms. A plain “Financing available” line doesn’t trigger that. If you want a “payments from” line, use the lender’s approved wording.

Regions lists phrases to never say: “Everyone gets approved,” “This won’t affect your credit,” and “It’s free money.” Don’t say “there’s no interest” unless the customer is actually approved for a 0% loan.

Let the homeowner apply on their own phone, with their own email. Never fill out the application for them. In 2021 the CFPB issued a consent order against GreenSky for allowing contractors and other sellers to take out unauthorized loans on consumers’ behalf. GreenSky had to pay a $2.5 million civil penalty and provide up to $9 million in loan cancellations and cash refunds.

Done right, it can save a sale. ShellBuilt, the contractor who started that ContractorTalk thread, wrote: “I had two different clients last week tell me at the closing table that if I had financing they would sign right now.”

One cash-flow warning. Owners on Reddit, as reported by Zentora, say some lenders pay only after the homeowner signs a completion form in the lender’s portal. Your crew and your supplier may get paid before you do. Plan for that gap.

What the close-rate claims are worth

Every published number says financing helps you close more jobs, about 17% to 21% by the vendors’ own counts. Every one of those numbers comes from a company that sells financing. Treat them as a reason to test financing in your own shop, not a promise of what it will do for you.

Here are the claims and who made them:

• Hearth says contractors see 17% more closed estimates “simply by offering financing options.”
• HFS Financial, a lender, says you’re likely to close 18% more projects and grow job sizes 30%. It names no study.
• Enhancify, another financing platform, claims 21% more closes and 16% bigger deals, per Zentora.
• Wisetack’s merchant survey found financed jobs averaged $4,500, versus $1,000 for all jobs. That compares different jobs, not the same job with and without financing.

Now the other side. The 2025 Houzz & Home Study surveyed Houzz users and was reported by Contractor Magazine. It found 84% of renovating homeowners paid with savings. Only 12% used secured home loans. Financing helps the smaller group who don’t want to pay cash. It won’t fix every stalled estimate.

So measure your own. Keep a simple tally: estimates where you offered financing, applications, approvals, signed jobs, and your close rate with and without financing. Regions also suggests tracking dealer fees as a percent of financed revenue. After 90 days, you’ll have a number nobody sold you.

In-house payment plans and cards

Cards cost you about 3%, and the customer’s credit limit caps the job. A payment plan where you hold the loan means you fund the job and wait months for your money. A simple progress-payment schedule, where the customer pays for work as it’s finished, generally isn’t a loan under federal rules.

Card fees are easy to price. Jobber charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per card payment, 2.7% plus 30 cents for tap to pay, and 1% for bank (ACH) payments. On a $10,000 invoice, a card payment costs you $290.30. That’s cheaper than most 0% plans, but plenty of homeowners don’t have $10,000 of room on a card.

Holding the loan yourself is a different animal. A contractor in that same ContractorTalk thread put it plainly: “I would avoid in house financing, since this requires you to pay all costs up front and accept monthly payments.”

There are rules too. As Zentora sums up Regulation Z, you become a creditor if you regularly extend consumer credit with a finance charge or more than four payments. “Regularly” means more than 25 times in the prior year, or more than 5 for credit secured by a home. States add their own rules. If you go this route, ask a lawyer who handles consumer credit first.

The progress schedule is the simple version. The CFPB’s own interpretation says home improvement jobs paid as the work progresses, only for work completed, with no obligation to keep paying, aren’t credit.

Mistakes that cost contractors money

Most financing problems come from five habits, and each one costs you margin, a sale or a legal headache. They are when you bring it up, who pays the fee, approvals that run out, who fills in the application, and what you put in an ad.

• Bringing up financing only after a price objection.
• Quoting 0% before deciding who pays the fee.
• Letting an approval expire before the job starts. Wisetack pre-approvals, per Arborgold, last 14 days.
• Filling out the application for the homeowner.
• Advertising a monthly payment without the APR and terms.

What to do this week

Open your estimate template today and add one line: “Financing available through our lending partner.” Then email two lenders and ask for their written fee schedule on every plan, including 0%. Start the tally on your next estimate: offers, applications, approvals and signed jobs.

One more thing to check. A financing link lives on your website and your estimates, and at least one platform’s sign-up path asks for a verified Google profile with 10 reviews. In my study of 9,700 contractor Google Business Profiles, 14% of ranking profiles listed no website. Check yours before you sign up.

And financing only helps on leads you actually reach. From the thousands of recorded homeowner calls I listened to while selling leads, the contractors who called back first, within minutes, won the work. A good payment option won’t save a callback that comes the next day.