Safety distributors sell to an unusual mix of customers. One day it's a municipal water department, the next it's a utility contractor, a school district maintenance crew, a refinery, and a small roofing company that just won a big job and needs fall protection for six people. Each comes with different credit risk and different tax paperwork.
Too often that paperwork lives in email attachments, file cabinets and somebody's memory. The app brings it into one place.
Credit applications without the paper chase
Credit applications are online, with signature. A new customer fills out the application in the app and signs it there, and you approve terms with one tap. No faxed forms with half the fields blank, no chasing the signature page, no retyping into your system.
That speed matters in safety. A contractor who just landed a job usually needs harnesses, lanyards, hard hats and hi-vis before the first day on site. If your credit process takes a week of back and forth, they will put the first order on a card at a competitor and keep buying there. When the application is easy, you get the first order, and the first order is usually the whole job.
Tax exemption certificates that don't expire on you
A large share of safety buyers are tax exempt: municipalities, school districts, state agencies, some utilities, and resellers buying for their own customers. Each exemption depends on a certificate on file, and certificates expire.
Tax exemption certificates in the app show every exempt account and whose certificate is missing or expired. Customers can upload their own certificate in the app, which saves your office from chasing it by email. When an audit comes, you are not digging through folders to prove a city fire department was exempt.
Offering better terms, safely
Better terms win safety business, especially with contractors who carry heavy PPE costs before they get paid on a job. The risk is extending terms to someone who can't pay. The app gives you tools to offer terms with your eyes open:
- Signed applications on file for every account, with the information you need to decide.
- Invoices and Look up an invoice so both you and the customer can see what is billed and what is open.
- The collections helper, which shows who owes money and how late, so you spot slipping payment habits before they become a write-off.
- Pay links on every invoice, so paying you is as easy as ordering from you.
With that visibility, you can extend net 30 to a contractor with confidence, watch how they pay, and adjust. A customer who pays well can earn better terms. A customer who slips gets a reminder before they get another pallet of gloves.
Approvals for bigger accounts
For multi-site accounts like utilities or school districts, terms live on the master account and every location inherits them. Each crew or building orders under the same terms and price file, and your credit decision is made once for the whole organization. That keeps your exposure clear and your setup simple.
Credit and tax paperwork is overhead. Every hour your office spends chasing a certificate or a signature is an hour not spent selling. Getting it online cuts that overhead, speeds up first orders, and lets you offer the terms that win accounts without taking on blind risk.
Want to see it with your own safety catalog? See how it works.