Hydraulics customers are a mixed bunch. A large plant with a purchasing department, a farmer with two tractors, a construction contractor who appears in spring with a broken excavator and wants to open an account on the spot. Each wants terms. Each is a different kind of risk.
The slow way to handle that is a faxed credit application, a phone call to references, and a customer who buys cash for three weeks while paperwork sits on a desk. In the meantime, he may find another supplier.
Credit applications without the paper chase
The app has an online credit application with a signature. The customer fills it in from the phone or computer, signs it, and it comes to your office. You review it and approve terms with one tap. The customer is not waiting on a fax machine, and your office is not re-typing a smudged form.
Because the application lives in the app, the rep can send it the day he meets a new contractor at the jobsite, rather than leaving a paper copy that gets lost on a dashboard.
Tax exemption certificates that do not expire on you
Hydraulics has more tax-exempt sales than most people think. Agricultural customers, manufacturers buying parts for production equipment, resellers and government accounts can all be exempt, depending on the state. The trouble is the certificate. It expires, it was never collected, or it sits in a filing cabinet nobody checks.
The tax exemption certificates tool shows every exempt account and whose certificate is missing or expired. That is a short list your office can work every month, instead of finding out in an audit.
Offering better terms, safely
Better terms can win business, especially against a national house that is strict about credit. But you only want to stretch terms where you can see what is happening. The app gives you some tools to do that:
- Monthly budgets on an account, so orders that push a month past the budget are held for approval.
- Approval required on accounts where every order should go to a manager first.
- Quotes-only mode for accounts that should request prices but not order directly.
- Invoices and pay links, so customers can see what is open and pay it.
- Collections reminders that go from friendly to firm.
Put together, those let you say yes to a contractor's account with a sensible limit, watch how they pay, and loosen up as they prove themselves. For a seasonal customer, that can be the difference between winning the account and sending them to the counter down the road.
It also helps with bigger accounts. A plant with several locations can be set up as a master account with the terms set once, so every location gets the same terms without separate paperwork.
Seasonal customers deserve a word of their own. Ag and construction accounts are quiet all winter and urgent all spring. If their credit application, tax certificate and terms are already sorted before the busy season, the first breakdown of the year turns into an order through the app instead of a scramble to set up an account while a machine sits idle in the field.
The aim is simple: open good accounts fast, keep the paperwork current, and give terms to the customers who earn them. That is how credit stops being a bottleneck and starts being a selling point.
Want to see it with your own hose, fittings and customers? See how it works.