Bearing and power transmission distributors carry a mix of invoices. Lots of small ones for bearings, belts and grease. A few big ones for a gearbox, a motor or a shutdown order. Some for repair or assembly work. Every one that sits unpaid an extra couple of weeks slows your cash, and your office spends time answering "Can you resend that?" and "What PO was it against?"
Let customers see and pay invoices themselves
In the app, customers see their invoices: what is billed and what is open. A plant's accounts payable clerk can find a copy without calling. Every invoice can carry a Pay now button through pay links, so a customer ready to pay can do it on the spot.
That helps most with smaller accounts, like a machine shop or a motor repair shop, who will pay promptly when it is easy. It also helps a larger plant whose AP team wants clean copies to match against POs and blanket releases.
Collections without the awkward calls
Collections and pay links send past-due reminders with a Pay now button on every invoice. The tone moves from friendly to firm as the invoice ages, and reminders can go out automatically. Your office stops writing the same reminder by hand.
The collections helper gives reps a view of who owes money and how late, a stop-by nudge when they are near an account with a past-due balance, and the reminder schedule. A rep who is in the plant to talk about a drive upgrade can mention an open invoice to the maintenance manager, who often knows exactly why it is stuck.
Some habits that help PT distributors:
- Turn on pay links for every account, not only slow payers.
- Start reminders friendly and let them firm up as invoices age.
- Let reps see past-due balances before a visit.
- Use Look up an invoice when a customer calls, so the answer comes in seconds.
- Follow large gearbox and motor invoices closely; one late payment there matters.
Find any invoice fast
Look up an invoice lets reps and the owner find any invoice and see what is still open. When a buyer asks about a reducer invoice from two months ago, the rep has the answer on his phone, not back at the office.
Texts to customers help too. A rep can text a reminder from the app, and the text is saved to the account so the office knows what was said.
For the owner, the exec dashboard shows sales, margin, cash, receivables and pace on one screen. You see receivables creeping up before they become a cash problem.
Shutdown work deserves its own attention. When a plant runs an outage, you might ship a large order of bearings, belts, chain and couplings in one week. Getting that invoice in front of the right person with a Pay now button, and following up on a sensible schedule, keeps a big outage from becoming a big receivable.
None of this changes how you bill. The app works with your existing ERP. It changes how easy it is for customers to pay and how much time your office spends chasing. In a business where you may need to stock large spherical bearings or a reducer for a customer's critical machine, getting cash in sooner pays for that inventory.
Want to walk through it with your own plant and OEM customers? Book a demo.