Alcohol distributors are a core part of business at Fintech. We support distributors with automated payment collection for alcohol deliveries, increasing route efficiency for drivers, and improving reconciliation for accounts receivable (AR) teams. Part of our support involves working in the market alongside distributors, which is exactly what we recently did with City Beverages, one of the largest distributors in Florida.
Joe Mendez (Distributor Account Manager) and Jimmy Freeman (Sr. Distributor Program Manager) spent a couple of days with City Beverages, training sales reps and visiting several off-premises accounts. These experiences allow Fintech to serve as boots on the ground and help our distributor clients show the benefits of automated electronic alcohol invoice payments to their customers.
Training Reps on Using E-Vite for Fast Enrollment
Part of the visit with City Beverages included training their reps and drivers on how to use Fintech’s E-Vite to easily add new accounts within minutes. With both an app and web version, City’s drivers and reps can create a digital enrollment link for Fintech’s automated alcohol invoice payments to share with accounts via email or text.
City Beverages wants to go 100% paperless across its footprint, and Fintech’s E-Vite makes electronic payment adoption fast and easy. It takes between 8-10 minutes to set up a retailer on Fintech, and distributors can track the status of E-Vites sent out as well as which reps are using the app.
Co-Op Incentive Opportunity
We also launched a co-op incentive program with City Beverage’s team. Each rep gets a bonus per new Fintech account for three months. This helps reps push automated electronic invoice payments, and Fintech matches any promotional bonus offered by a distributor.
Ride-Along Visit to Accounts
On the second day of our distributor visit, Joe rode alongside Michael, a City Beverages rep with over 20 years of experience, to visit multiple off-premises accounts. They worked together to go into coolers, take inventory, and create orders for these accounts.
Prior to going into the stores, Joe and Michael generated E-Vite links to share with operators after discussing the ROI benefits of adopting Fintech. By automating alcohol invoice payments, operators can receive deliveries faster, and don’t have to stop what they are doing to pay cash or write a check. In the event that payment wasn’t left for the driver, Fintech eliminates the need for drivers to backtrack to collect payments.
ROI for Distributors
Distributors like City Beverages gain multiple benefits when using Fintech for their retailers. Even the most streamlined AR operations incur labor and costs for processing cash or check payments. This comes from logging payments into back-office systems, check scanning, depositing payments into the bank, reconciling bank and accounting records, correcting errors from manual data entry, and potential fraud and security risks.
Fintech allows distributors to save an average of 15 minutes per delivery — an operational savings of $8.31 per stop. Drivers enjoy the efficiency, as it allows them to hit more stops on a route in less time, minimize check-in times with AR teams at the end of the day, and avoid backtracking to collect payments.
AR teams can take advantage of timely payments and simplified reconciliation with invoice and remittance data capture in their RAS or back-office system.
Thank You to City Beverages!
Fintech is proud to support City Beverages in their efforts to go 100% EFT for alcohol invoice payment collection. It is always good to go into markets with distributors to learn ways to help their business and their customers. Whether it be trainings, co-op incentive programs, or ride-alongs, Fintech is here to help our distributor partners with whatever they need.
Read more about what we offer distributors here.
