<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none;" alt="" src="https://px.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=1937434&amp;fmt=gif">

Join 44,000+ Retailers and 3,600+ Vendors. And Growing.

See how iControl has helped thousands instantly improve their financial transactions and margins.


CVS
Walgreens
Riteaid
Applebees
Red Lobster
Benihana
Kroger
Target
Safeway

Alcohol Payments

Benefits of Switching to E-Invoicing for Alcohol

When used for B2B payments, electronic invoicing offers many advantages. Learn why you should switch from manual invoice payment processes to e-invoicing.


When it comes to running a business and juggling multiple transactions, processing invoices can be tedious, time consuming, and expensive. With traditional systems, manual invoicing takes up valuable resources. Luckily, you can leverage an automated solution and streamline your operations by switching to e-invoicing for your alcohol purchases. 

Many businesses in the Food and Beverage industry handle thousands of transactions and invoices for alcohol and other inventory daily, but continue to use manual invoicing methods. In fact, some even still operate on a cash-only basis. Although this method has benefits, it also has many disadvantages. It takes time, creates room for error, and presents risks of theft or misplaced cash and checks.

Shifting to electronic invoicing can prevent these risks and improve your operations. E-invoicing preserves internal resources and saves time that can be reinvested back into your business. Used for B2B payments, electronic invoicing offers plenty of additional advantages. Learn more about why alcohol businesses like yours should switch from manual invoice and payment processes to e-invoicing. 

The disadvantages of manual invoicing

It's easy to be trapped in a rut doing the same things you've always done. And we understand that many businesses are reluctant to make significant changes to their operations. 

Maybe you prefer manual invoicing because you believe that moving to electronic invoicing will take too much time and effort. However, we promise you that the advantages of electronic invoicing outweigh the disadvantages of manual invoicing. First, let's take a look at some of the drawbacks you may be experiencing with manual invoicing.

  • High costs: Companies with complicated accounts payable can spend a lot of cash processing invoices. Done manually, it can cost between $6 and $8 to process a single invoice, which adds up quickly.
  • Wasted time: Manual invoicing is a tedious process, and can cause you to waste time and resources.
  • Error-prone & inefficiency: Human error, late payment penalties, missed discounts, duplicate payments, and overpayments all become commonplace with manual invoicing. This alone should persuade any wary alcohol business owner to switch to electronic payment processing.
  • Low productivity: Manual invoicing takes time away from more important duties, like negotiating with alcohol vendors. This can lead to low performance and employee dissatisfaction, ultimately impacting your bottom line. 

Manual invoicing is also hard to scale. This means, as you open up new facilities and add vendors, you will have to process more invoices. Fortunately, automated electronic systems ensure everything is processed and paid on time, correctly and effortlessly. 

Benefits of E-Invoicing

Yes, it will take time and patience to switch from manual invoicing to electronic invoicing. However, the truth is, today’s consumers prefer to pay electronically, forcing businesses to move into a cashless world. Why should your alcohol payments process be any less digital? 

As mentioned above, switching to electronic invoicing can help you preserve internal resources, which can be reinvested in the business. It offers plenty of other benefits too.

1. More Secure, Paperless Invoices

Surprisingly, some alcohol businesses still prefer to run their enterprises entirely in cash. Doing this has several disadvantages, particularly concerning billing. Everything from misplaced cash and paper documents to human error and fraud arises with manual invoices and payments, creating unexpected problems. Luckily, a computerized invoicing system greatly minimizes the likelihood of these happenings. 

Implementing a B2B payment solution can help distributors, retailers, and restaurant operators retrieve invoices through an online gateway, effectively addressing the issue of missing invoices, or even cash. E-invoicing also offers secure data encryption during all exchanges, promoting strong process controls and transparency of who has access to business-critical transactional data.

2. Time-Saving, Cost-Effective, and Less Labor Required

Electronic invoicing is more cost-effective for alcohol businesses –allowing management to rest assured that any invoice can be conveniently retrieved online, especially when data is needed for reporting. This saves time spent sifting through stacks of paper to obtain the correct information, and saves money on resources. 

Instead of assigning an employee or a group of employees to sort and send invoices, they can be sent virtually or retrieved by the client using login credentials. And, as previously mentioned, compliance and security risks associated with paper invoices are no longer an issue during this process.

3. Streamlined Invoice Payments

In many cases, when invoice payments fall under the jurisdiction of a manager, problems emerge. Free time is scarce in many businesses, and managers are usually unreachable to approve bills and deliveries on short notice.

A B2B payment solution is the ideal approach to speed up and streamline this process. Suppliers can quickly send invoices to retailers and restaurant operators, who can approve and pay them online simply by logging into the system via their desktop.

E-Invoicing is Optimal for Retailers and Distributors

E-invoicing allows a business to digitize the processing of invoices. As a result, retailers, restaurant operators, distributors and other stakeholders can enjoy strategic and operational benefits. 

Invoice creation and submission becomes easy, and authorized users gain complete transparency of invoice statuses, such as when they are being submitted, remitted and paid. Invoice validation failure becomes avoidable. Payments are correct and on time. And all this electronic activity is seamlessly recorded. Benefits include: 

  • Reduced costs
  • Increased efficiency
  • Fast payments
  • Better retailer–supplier relationships
  • Better account reconciliation
  • Fewer invoices rejected
  • Increased productivity
  • Better cash management

Conclusion

Put simply, with all of these benefits, and in today’s digital world, you should not be operating your alcohol business manually. E-invoicing will make your alcohol payment process as simple and safe as possible. No waiting. And no wondering. At iControl, we provide electronic payment solutions for many alcohol distributors, retailers and restaurant operators so they can improve their invoicing process. Contact us today to learn more.  

Similar posts

Can't Get Enough?

Subscribe to our newsletter to see how you can improve margins through operational efficiency and insights.