 |
 The majority of Beverage companies often have a large proportion of their customers with charge accounts. It is not uncommon to see 90% invoices on a charge basis. It is common for a company to have a large number of small amount invoices. A truck route will generally deliver approximately 20 invoices per day. A company with 25 routes would process 10,000 invoices in a month. Companies may also have large customers, such as grocery chain stores. These may have invoices delivered as frequently as daily, and will generally have larger amounts. Some accounts may make use of central billing. This is and important concept and is common where there are a number of local stores or customers where deliveries are made. However, the A/R statements and payments are received from a separate head office. This is the usual method used by chain stores. Collection of overdue accounts is a very important process. Thirty day terms for invoice payment are common. Companies will often have a credit department, with a manager and collection persons who collect accounts and manage cash flows. Most small customers will receive monthly statements. These are commonly mailed to the customer. In certain industries, such as Bottled Water, A/R Statements are incorporated into the customer’s invoice, thus having the driver deliver both the invoice and the A/R statement. Large Chain Stores often require billing summaries to be sent to them. These summarize the delivery made to each of their stores. The head office uses this to verify deliveries to their stores, and to generate payments. For the dairy industry, this is common for school districts, where the driver delivers to individual schools, but the payment is made from the school district office for all their schools. | Back to Top |
|