I have a friend who is constantly running low on money. Abby has regular lanes and is a good driver. She loves being on the road with her dog and sometimes her husband Nick. But the money end of the business? Always a problem for her. She’ll go without her own dinner if she doesn’t have enough cash to buy Moe, the German shepherd, his dog food.
Abby uses TruckingOffice. She says it makes sense to her. It’s just that she’s not home so much on days that she can get the billing out. For the last three months, she’s tried to send out her billing invoices once a month – that’s not working out for her.
Being an owner-operator means you have to pay your bills and you have to collect your checks. Abby is an extreme case, but we worked out a plan that seems to be working for her. All electronic.
Before Abby even starts her trip, she makes sure that all the necessary information is in the dispatch, especially the correct email address and name of the person in Accounts Payable who will cut her check.
Abby will take a picture of her signed bill of lading and send it to her own email as soon as she gets back into the truck. The email will have the name of the customer in the subject line so she can find it quickly. She has a little sign taped to the dashboard that says “SEND THE PICTURE NOW” to remind her.
Then, the next time she stops for coffee, she won’t leave the cab until she signs in to TruckingOffice and goes to the invoice module. She attaches the bill of lading picture to the invoice and off it goes. With the new REMIT TO option, she’s managing to get the factoring service paid sooner, and getting money into her pocket so maybe she won’t be using the factoring service so much. (Nick likes that idea.)
Fewer fees, getting paid faster (her customers might have liked the fact that Abby might not send them a bill for several weeks – good for their cash flow, maybe) and making more money. Abby thinks that going all electronic makes trucking even more fun.
Moe’s just happy when he gets his burgers.
TruckOffice has a free 30 day trial for you to discover how simple your billing can be. Your customers are moving into an all-electronic system – it’s time for you to do so too.
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