Some of your best HVAC/R accounts are also the hardest to keep under control. A service company with twenty techs, each charging parts to the same account. A restaurant or grocery chain with refrigeration and HVAC needs at fifty stores. A school district with maintenance staff in every building. They all have the same concern: who is ordering, and is anyone watching the spend?
The distributor who solves that for them gets more of their business.
Managers approve, buyers order
Each person who orders can have their own login. For each one, the account can choose whether they can place orders, request quotes only, or both. That handles a familiar HVAC problem: a tech who should be able to price a condenser for a customer but shouldn't be buying one on the company account without the service manager knowing.
Orders that need a second look go to the person who manages the account. The manager gets them by email and text with an approve or decline button, so they can approve from a rooftop or a ride-along without logging in to anything.
Monthly budgets
Each buyer can have a monthly budget, set one of these ways:
- Approve every order: every order from that buyer goes to the manager first.
- Approve over budget only: orders go through, and only one that pushes the month past the budget is held for approval.
- No limit: leave the budget blank for buyers who should order freely.
For a service company, each tech might have a monthly parts budget, with anything over going to the service manager. For a chain, each store's maintenance person might have a budget for filters and small parts, with the regional facilities manager approving the rest. The customer gets control, and you keep the orders instead of losing them to a purchasing freeze.
Master accounts for multi-site customers
A master account holds the price file, the customer's part numbers and the terms for all its locations. No orders are placed on the master itself. Each location points to it and inherits the pricing, discount and part-number cross-references, and anything set on a location overrides the master.
You can also block an item on the master and name what buyers should order instead. If a chain has standardized on one brand of thermostat or one filter grade, you can block the others and point buyers to the approved item. The buyer is told at checkout, and it covers every location.
For on-site programs, load every bin on the master and assign each to a location, so each store or building sees only its own bins.
Why control wins business
Large HVAC/R buyers often consolidate suppliers when they can't get a handle on spend. Budgets, approvals and master accounts let them put more of their people on your app because they can see and limit what those people buy. That turns one buyer into dozens, all ordering from you.
It makes your rep's job easier, too. The rep is no longer caught between a tech who needs a motor right now and an owner who wants to approve everything. The rules are in the app, and everyone can see them. And when the owner asks why parts spend jumped in August, every order, approval and buyer is right there.
Book a demo and see it with your counter and inside sales team.