Packaging distributors carry a lot of money on their books. You buy boxes, film and tape by the truckload, stock custom print for customers, and deliver pallets on terms. Meanwhile your customers' AP departments are in no hurry to pay for brown boxes. When receivables stretch, your cash is tied up in someone else's shipping department.
The app helps shorten that gap without making customers feel chased.
Make it easy to see what's owed
Customers see their invoices in the app: what's billed and what's open. Look up an invoice lets them find any invoice and what's still open on it, without asking your office for copies. The account status page shows the balance, open orders, backorders and aging in one place.
That's especially useful for customers who need to match invoices to receiving, like a manufacturer whose AP clerk needs proof that two pallets of film arrived before paying. With invoices and order tracking in the same app, questions get answered faster, and fewer invoices sit unpaid waiting for a phone call.
Pay links and reminders
Collections and pay links put a Pay now button on every invoice. Customers can pay by card or bank from the app. A small e-commerce shipper can clear a week's invoices on a phone in a minute.
Past-due reminders go out on a schedule you choose, from friendly to firm, and can be automatic. Each reminder carries the pay link, so the customer can act right away. Keep it gentle for a large manufacturer whose payment run is just slow, and firmer for a small shipper whose balance keeps creeping up.
A collections helper for reps
The collections helper shows who owes money and how late, gives a stop-by nudge, and shows the reminder schedule. Packaging reps visit their larger accounts regularly to check racks, review usage and talk about new projects. When the app reminds the rep there's an older invoice open, a quick mention at the visit often settles it.
A practical routine might look like this:
- Automatic friendly reminders go to accounts just past due, each with a pay link.
- Reps see older balances for customers on today's route and mention them in person.
- Small shippers pay from their phone during the visit.
- Your credit team works the short list of accounts that need a real conversation.
See trouble coming
The exec dashboard shows sales, margin, cash, receivables and pace on one screen. Packaging is seasonal for many shippers, with heavy buying before the holiday peak and slower months after. If receivables balloon in the months after peak, you'll see it early and can plan cash for the next round of inventory buys rather than being caught short.
Faster collections free cash to buy film and corrugated ahead of price increases, take vendor prepay discounts, stock up for peak, and fund new custom print programs. And because invoices, pay links and reminders live in the same app your customers order from, getting paid becomes part of a smooth relationship rather than a source of friction. Customers who find it easy to pay you tend to pay sooner, and they notice which vendors make their life simpler.
It also changes your office's month-end. Instead of printing statements and making the same reminder calls to the same accounts, your credit person works a short list of customers who truly need a conversation. Routine follow-up runs on the schedule you set, in the tone you chose, with a way to pay attached every time.
Want to walk through it with your own accounts? Book a demo.