Machine shops have lumpy cash flow. A job shop might wait on its own customer to pay before it pays you. A production plant might hold your invoice until receiving signs off on a box of drills that got put straight into the crib. Meanwhile you've already paid for the carbide, and some of it was expensive.
And tooling invoices come in many small pieces. A busy shop might get a dozen invoices from you in a month: a box of inserts Monday, a rush tap order Wednesday, coolant Friday. Each one can get stuck for its own reason.
Collections in cutting tools isn't usually about customers who won't pay. It's about invoices that get stuck, forgotten or lost.
Let shops look up their own invoices
A lot of collections time is spent sending copies of invoices. The app lets customers see what's billed and what's open, and look up any invoice themselves. When a shop's bookkeeper needs a copy to match a PO, she gets it without calling your office.
Your team has the same tool. Look up an invoice finds any invoice and what's still open, so your inside rep can answer a shop owner's question while he's still on the phone. Order tracking helps as well: when a shop can see where each order is and that it was delivered, there's one less reason for an invoice to sit.
Reminders with a Pay now button
Collections and pay links send past-due reminders with a Pay now button on every invoice, from friendly to firm, and they can run automatically. A friendly reminder catches invoices that simply got buried under a busy week. A firmer one later catches the accounts that need attention.
For a small job shop where the owner also does the books, a reminder with a link he can pay from right away is often all it takes.
Give reps a role without making them collectors
Cutting tool reps are in their customers' shops all the time: running test cuts, counting cribs, troubleshooting a tap that keeps breaking. They know the owner and the office manager. That makes them well placed to sort out a stuck invoice in a two-minute conversation.
The collections helper shows each rep who owes money and how late, gives them a stop-by nudge for accounts on today's route, and shows the reminder schedule so they know what the customer has already been sent.
A simple routine:
- Turn on automatic friendly reminders for every account.
- Send firm reminders only after a threshold you choose.
- Have reps check the collections helper before each route day.
- Keep team notes on the invoice so the office and the rep see the same story.
Why it matters for tooling distributors
Carbide is expensive to stock. Cash stuck in receivables is cash you can't put into inventory for the next crib program or a shop that just landed a big job. When invoices are easy to find and easy to pay, shops pay sooner, your office spends less time on copies and calls, and your reps help collect without damaging relationships they've spent years building.
It also makes it easier to keep offering terms to the small shops that need them, because you can see clearly who pays and who doesn't.
Ready to walk through it with your own shops? Book a demo.