You finished the job, got paid by card, and three weeks later the money vanished from your account with the word "dispute" next to it. The chargeback is the worst way to lose money in this trade, because you lose three times: the payment, the dispute fee, and the hours spent building your defense. The good news: most of them are preventable with process, and the ones that arrive anyway get won with evidence. To do either, you first have to understand how it actually works.

Who decides (and it isn't you)

When a client disputes a charge, they don't complain to your payment processor or to you: they complain to their own bank — the one that issued their card. And that bank decides. You submit evidence, the processor passes it along, but the referee is the client's bank, with its deadlines and its rules. Two practical consequences:

  • It's not a conversation, it's a case file. The bank doesn't hear your explanation on the phone: it receives a package of documents. The best package wins.
  • The deadline is real. The dispute has a response cutoff; miss it and you lose by default, even if you were completely right.

Card vs. ACH: two different animals

With a card, there's a dispute process with evidence: your chance to fight and win. With ACH (bank transfer) the system is different: there is no card-style "appeal with evidence" process — certain return types (like "not authorized") simply happen through the banking rail. Translated to the jobsite: an ACH payment leans even harder on the relationship and the signed paper, because the after-the-fact defense is thinner. That's not a reason to refuse ACH (the fees are better) — it's the reason the process below is not optional.

The process that prevents 90%

  1. Scope and price signed BEFORE starting. Not a loose text message: a document where the client signs what will be done, for how much, and what's not included. The classic chargeback isn't fraud — it's an expectations disagreement that reached a bank. Signed paper kills the disagreement before it's born.
  2. The estimate approved by the client, with their click. The approval should be recorded: who, when, which version of the estimate. "They said yes on the phone" is not evidence.
  3. Photos of everything, dated: before you start, during, and at the end. The "before" photo wins more disputes than any other: it proves the real condition you started from.
  4. Changes in writing. Every extra gets its number accepted before it happens. The verbal extra is the seed of "I never authorized that."
  5. A clear invoice at payment time: what was done, what it costs, how to pay. A charge the client recognizes on their statement doesn't get disputed out of confusion — and confusion is a real source of chargebacks.

If the client is upset, fix it before their bank does

The warning sign isn't subtle: the client who stops answering, the "this isn't what we talked about." At that moment you have two paths: fix it yourself (an adjustment, a partial refund, a correction visit) or let their bank fix it. The first one costs less — always. A $100 partial refund stings; an $850 chargeback plus fee plus hours stings more, and someone else decides it. Swallowing your pride is, mathematically, the cheap move.

If the chargeback arrives anyway

  • Always respond, and before the deadline. Default is guaranteed defeat.
  • Build the complete package: signed terms, approved estimate, dated photos, a record of site visits or hours, the messages with the client, the invoice. Chronological order, no editorializing — banks read documents, not emotions.
  • Answer the actual claim. If the dispute says "service not provided", your package proves it was provided (finished-work photos, sign-off). If it says "not authorized", prove the authorization (the recorded approval, the signed terms).

How Cotiza does it

This whole process is exactly what the app builds around every job: the client approves the estimate through their link (who and when gets recorded), signs the work terms before you start, job photos live with the project, and payment goes out on a clear invoice — card or ACH — so the charge the client sees has a first and last name.

A Cotiza invoice showing Record payment and Share / get paid actions, with the card fee and the exact payout amount displayed before sharing
The clear invoice: what was done, what it costs, and how to pay — the first defense against a dispute.

The rule that sums it all up: the dispute is won the day you started the job, not the day the letter arrived. Whoever signs, photographs, and records almost never needs it — and when they do, they win.