Why online payments can be the end of bad payers
Dealing with bad payers is something that every UK food supplier or wholesaler will have experienced. Sadly, it’s a common thread that runs through our industry. At Fresho, we understand the difficulty this causes so it is fundamental to our purpose to provide our users with a solution.
In such a fast-moving industry, cash flow is already strained and can be critical to the success of your business. Haines Watts – a North London accountancy firm – discusses why this is so important in a blog for wholesalers:
‘Because of the perishable nature of your goods, you also have to make very rapid decisions, so you need the right cashflow management to make decisions quickly.’
By making the shift to online payments, you no longer have to put up with bad payers. Online payments provide you with the option of paying with a card giving you the confidence to be paid on time, every time.
Card payments can clean up your accountant books, set different payment terms for customers, and are loved by chefs who benefit from accrued points as they spend.
Fresho is designed to help food suppliers save time and money in their operations. The online payments feature is built to meet the needs of the industry. Payment terms can be set for each supplier, and the charge applies once any late adjustments are made to the order.
“It’s a really helpful feature. A big time waster for us was chasing payments from people and people being slack paying their bills and paying late.”
Online payments are one of the many benefits for food suppliers who choose to use an online ordering platform.
Now, let’s get into it.
In this Guide
"Cleanest books we've ever seen"
When we speak to the food wholesalers using online ordering and payments, they frequently mention how much easier life is for the accounts department.
Because suppliers no longer need to track payments on paper or manually upload invoices to accounting tools, their bookkeeping is efficient and organised. After an online payment is made with Fresho an invoice is generated and passed into your accounting system.
Depending on how many orders your business receives, this can save your admin team hours each day.
"Fresho has saved us time having one admin staff that can produce 200-300 orders a week, in a day”
The reduction in time is coupled with a consistent approach to invoicing that looks professional, and simplifies how you operate your business.
Set different payment terms for your customers
Like most businesses, there is a mix of good and bad payers. You may have these on different payment terms or grouped in some other way.
With Fresho you can set these customers up in the same way. For instance, you can categorise customers into bronze, silver, or gold payers. It is then very simple to tell all bronze and silver customers that they need to set up their cards in Fresho.
Fresho supports suppliers to do this by providing email templates that you can use to inform your customers.
Payment terms are adjustable, too. Whatever payment terms you have in place, these can be set up for each customer. Importantly, this helps suppliers to ease their cash flow. If you want more on how to avoid the cash flow killer, find more here.
After the financial uncertainty caused by COVID-19, suppliers tell us that they set all new customers upon card payments. This reduces the risk as you grow your business with new customers. Don’t deal with bad payers any longer!
Secure payments for you and your customers
Fresho uses one of the world’s most secure payment platforms – Stripe – to process all payments.
As Stripe process over $640 billion in payments every year, they have some of the most advanced security. This assures your payments are safe and secure on Fresho.
Due to Stripe fees, you will have to pay a fee. However, these are significantly less than other providers will offer you.
For regular debit or credit cards, the charge is 2%. For AMEX cards, this is slightly higher at 2.95%.
This fee can be passed on to your customer or absorbed yourself. The choice is yours.
Loved by chefs
The final and most important point is that the chefs who use Fresho love our card feature.
The Head Chef at Mustard & Co – voted the fourth best roast in the UK in 2021 – is a chef who loves using Fresho:
“We love using Fresho because of how easy it makes finding new ingredients for us to try as well as all the staples.”
Other chefs love ordering on Fresho for four main reasons.
They can save time and energy with automatic card payments. As opposed to waiting, chasing and hassling for payments, there’s a guarantee money will roll into their bank account when due.
Invoices are at their disposal. If chefs need to find an invoice, they can login to Fresho and find every invoice in the platform.
