Haulier's encouraged to go paperless to speed up payments with self-billing

Cash is king. The faster you can get paid the better, particularly in the haulage industry. To make the process simpler for hauliers, transport management software provider Mandata has introduced a quicker, easier way for haulage operators to get paid; by adding a new self-billing option to its cloud TMS Go! transport management system.

The software enables hauliers to allow their customers to self-bill; enabling them to match job costs to a self-bill credit or invoice raised by their customer for the services they’ve provided.

Once the haulier is happy that each job charge matches the agreed price, a self-bill invoice can be raised for internal purposes and jobs can be marked as paid.

Ian Thompson, internal sales manager at Mandata said: “Hauliers working with the likes of Amazon and other large organisations find invoicing a highly complex, prolonged process. Using TMS Go! as a job management tool together with the new self-billing feature, will simplify the process for both the haulier and the customer.  Customers who use this functionality often find they receive payment quicker as a result and matching jobs against payments is easier too.”

The new functionality is one of a host of new features which have been added to the transport management software this year to simplify job management, proof of delivery and invoicing for hauliers operating fleets of up to 30 vehicles.

“With ever tightening margins, increasing costs and market uncertainty, late payments just add to the growing pressures of small business owners. Software like TMS Go! really can help to make a difference in making it easier to work for larger organisations by streamlining processes,” added Ian.

Five tips to improve cash flow and late payment:

1. Address any problems with non-conformance as soon as possible after delivery is made. This way any queries can be addressed and resolved quickly, and changes made to ensure invoices are correct at the time of issue.
2. Use a system that supports electronic proof of delivery to allow instant PODs to be received as deliveries are made. This way admin can produce invoices soon after the delivery is made and email them out to customers with all the relevant electronic documents – rather than waiting for paper PODs to be returned, scanned and invoices to be produced and posted.
3. Make electronic documentation available to customers on-line to make progress of deliveries as transparent as possible. Provide tracking and documentation available on-line to minimise inbound ETA’s and queries relating to invoices.
4. Use a software system to minimise the manual process of job management, POD and invoicing to ensure all the information you need is saved in one place. This significantly reduces the amount of paperwork you have to process and means if a customer does call you to query an invoice you can find the answer easily, quickly emailing copies of PODs and invoices they need within minutes.
5. Integrate your accounts system to the TMS to avoid having to make any manual data input and delays and errors transferring information from one system to another.

Anyone interested to know more about Mandata Go and the new self-billing option can contact Mandata for a demo by calling 0191 250 2220, email: hello@mandata.co.uk.