Craft brewers are dedicated to perfecting their beer and delivering high-quality products to their customers. What likely starts as a budding hobby quickly evolves into a fully scaled brewery business complete with dedicated facilities, distribution operations, and potentially on-premises taprooms with their own set of unique challenges. Managing the finances of such an enterprise can be daunting, but luckily for brewers, there are multiple smart integrations available to optimize back-office efficiency so they can focus on their true passion – making delicious craft beer.
Fintech integrates with over 200 different back-office systems in the beverage alcohol space, including Ekos. With this integration, brewers can have their line-item alcohol invoice data seamlessly delivered with increased speed and accuracy, providing better visibility into the financial management of the business.
Benefits of the Fintech/Ekos Integration
Fintech and Ekos users enjoy several advantages with their operations management. Here are five common benefits that generate ROI through improving efficiency.
1) Expedited Payment Cycles
The Fintech/Ekos integration speeds up invoice payment collection for each alcohol delivery. All COD (cash on delivery) and term invoices are paid in accordance with local and federal regulations via electronic funds transfer (EFT), ensuring timely and compliant payments. Users can access all bank activity with outstanding and paid invoices through the Fintech portal, granting them better visibility into cash flow management.
2) Faster and More Accurate Invoice Data Processing
For craft brewers, managing invoices efficiently is vital for sustaining and growing their business. Invoices stack up fast and there are often inconsistencies with how quantities, item descriptions, packaging type, and price are labeled. It takes hours to manually input line-item data from each invoice, especially if there is any data cleanup to match the business’s GL coding. Fintech is able to automatically ingest and normalize line-item data from all vendors and then deliver it back via integration or in a daily file for upload. This saves hours on manual data entry and improves accuracy with invoice data processing.
3) Save Time and Labor
Fintech saves delivery drivers an average of 15 minutes per stop – or $6.83 per delivery in operational savings! Since invoice payments are automated, managers don’t have to take time to write a check or gather cash to make the payment. This streamlines deliveries for both parties, allowing each to get back to business. Businesses also save money on labor costs by automating time-consuming tasks like manual invoice data entry. With less time spent on reconciliation, bookkeeping, and tracking down financials, businesses are freed up to reinvest those savings into other areas.
4) Unmatched Industry Expertise
Both Fintech and Ekos bring a wealth of experience to the beverage alcohol space. The combined Each solution is tailored to address key pain points and provides tools for analytical strategic growth. Craft brewers face their own niche challenges when scaling their business, so why not trust an integration built for the industry?
5) Improve Sales With a Dedicated CRM
Fintech also has Lilypad, a dedicated customer relationship management (CRM) tool for suppliers and distributors. With Lilypad, craft brew makers can optimize their daily tasks and boost sales performance. Sales reps can easily create, store, and track all account details to monitor placement fulfillment, nurture relationships, and make the most of their daily schedules.
Power Through Partnerships
The Fintech/Ekos integration is an example of industry leaders joining forces to drive even more value for craft beverage makers. Fintech’s EFT payments and invoice data processing capabilities matched with Ekos’s inventory and production management, pre-built reports, and sales/forecasting tools, align well in carving the way for beverage suppliers to grow.
“We have a long-term partnership with Fintech that has helped our customers to reduce hundreds of hours and get their money faster than they could have by themselves,” says Josh McKinney, president of Ekos. “It’s one of our earliest integrations, and we often hear that the time savings and efficiency improvements are enough to justify the cost of our software.”
Read Ekos’s Blog: 4 Integration Benefits of an Ekos/Fintech Software Integration
“Ekos software is one of the preferred integration partners Fintech works with for their self-distributing craft brewers, wineries, and cideries,” says Jim Kallies, director of Distributor & Supplier Accounts at Fintech. “Ekos seamlessly integrates with Fintech to send line-item invoice information for secure on-time payments according to State and Federal alcohol laws. It saves hours of labor costs compared to manually inputting the line-item invoice information retailers need for timely payments and management of their alcohol category.”
Craft brewers looking to improve financial operations around the business should check out the Fintech-Ekos integration. This type of integration covers critical aspects of day-to-day management, empowering teams to accelerate growth. Fintech and Ekos together create a recipe for brewing success.
