Transportation
Maintaining consistent cash flow is key to success
Transportation is an enormous global industry. You can send anything, any size, to any corner of the world you wish. The transportation of goods for both personal and business customers is in huge demand. This is especially true over the last few years amid the huge increase in online shopping. People expect deliveries on time and in perfect condition now more than ever. The transportation sector includes numerous different industries where delivery methods vary such as road; rail; maritime; air freight, and logistics. The transportation industry is becoming much more technology-driven with GPS trackers, sophisticated travel routes, and the combination of multiple methods of transport.
Many factors can affect transport company profits such as rising fuel costs, labor costs, cross-border regulations, and even geopolitical occurrences affecting routes and supply. The price of oil is a key factor in determining the cost of transportation. Global increases in the price of fuel and gas can have a detrimental effect on trucking companies for example. The pandemic has accelerated the move towards digitalization within the transportation industry – more orders equals more work, and more work equals more paperwork. Transportation companies are embracing technology to save costs in key areas, one of these areas is the finance department.
Consistent cash flow is key for the transportation industry
Historically, the transportation industry operates a high-volume model with low gross margins and profits. This means there are usually large Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable balances to constantly manage. Customers can be slow to pay within defined payment terms, this can present challenges to the company’s cash flow. Payments can also be received and processed in many ways such as lockbox files, credit card files, remote deposits, and images of remittances. Having a robust Accounts Receivable process to manage Collections and apply cash automatically leads to money arriving in company bank accounts sooner. This enables you to make payments to your own vendors within agreed payment timeframes. Maintaining a steady cash flow throughout the transportation business is the key to long-term success. Reconciling the company bank accounts is also important to identify the current cash position and conduct internal health checks.
Digitize the auditing and reporting process
The transportation industry deals with an extensive amount of paperwork, particularly in processing daily orders and deliveries. Proof of delivery (POD) is a very important part of the process, and the signed POD is a key document to keep on file. Records of all sales and payments regarding customer and vendor information are required to be stored for auditing and reporting purposes. It’s critical that all financial data, records, and invoices are stored safely and securely, and be easily accessible. Cashbook digitizes all documents and financial data for this purpose. Such as signed POD forms which can be retrieved and viewed through portals. The original invoices can also be viewed when collecting payments for example.
There are also multiple customizable reports and graphing capabilities in Cashbook to show data across each cash automation module. For example, see in ‘real-time’ what money is still outstanding on the AR side, what payments are yet to be made on the AP side, what customers are gone past due, and view full customer account activity in Collections. Whatever Cashbook module you are using, there are reports to analyze the current cash situation. Along with the benefits of accessing data instantly, digitizing your financial records leads to huge savings on paper storage and eliminates the worry of ever losing valuable data.
A single proven solution for the transportation industry
Many transportation companies are using outdated and labor-intensive manual financial processes. Cashbook is a proven solution that has multiple companies around the world using our cash automation software solutions in the transportation industry. Automating key financial processes leads to huge savings of time, resources, and overall costs. Having transportation customers who have already implemented our software, means we have the required experience of specific financial challenges within the industry. We have tailored our solutions to solve these business needs. If you wish to contact us and see for yourself how we can transform your finance department, request a demo today.
