Overview
R.H. Barringer Distributing Co. is a wholesale distributor of Anheuser-Busch products in North Carolina. As with 32 other states, in North Carolina, beer is a cash-on-delivery product. Prior to Fintech, a typical day of deliveries would consist of the driver arriving at a retail destination and unloading the delivery. Since the drivers cannot leave without payment, they must wait on the store manager to pay for the shipment. In many cases, store managers were usually too busy with customers or overloaded in other ways to deal with providing payment right away. Therefore, during this time, it meant the driver had to wait for payment, losing time for other deliveries and thusly losing profit.
 
For their invoice and settlement service, R.H. Barringer was utilizing a manual bank draft EFT system through their commercial bank. This painstaking system required them to manually transcribe the trading partner totals to the bank software, manually generate and manually fax confirmations to each trading partner. Then, they would manually post the payments to their accounts receivable. For R.H. Barringer, this was a time-wasting, laborious process, only adding to their administrative costs. And, since it was a non-standard solution, a large majority of their larger chain retail customers preferred to not use this service at all. In the end, the actual number of their retail customers using this manual EFT process was less than 1%.
 
In 2000, R.H. Barringer decided it was time to find a user-friendlier, cost effective EFT solution. The service provider they would choose would have to meet certain qualifications. The solution would have to provide a high degree of integration and automation with their Wholesaler Computer Systems (WCS) route accounting software. The service would have to provide them automatic extraction of the invoice information and automatic posting of payments. The solution would also be required to give them greater penetration into their retail accounts. Finally, and most importantly, they needed be 100% confident that their fund transfers would be electronically sent accurately and securely with the new solution.
 
EFT is the Key
R.H. Barringer was aware of Fintech and that 15 of their larger chain retailers were using Fintech's services. The decision-makers at R.H. Barringer, Rick Craig, vice president operations and Gail Holbrook, manager-computer operations, researched several EFT service providers. Their decision came after evaluating Fintech versus other EFT solution providers.
 
R.H. Barringer discovered that Fintech's flexible services were both standards and non-standards based. Also, Fintech offered them the automated invoice and the payment-posting service they required, as well as the ability to integrate with their route accounting software. Rick Craig went to the Fintech website and emailed for more information. He was astonished to get an immediate response from Larry Wojciechowski, president and CEO of Fintech. From there, Larry coordinated with the Fintech Sales team in getting them information to assist R.H. Barringer in further understanding the Fintech EFT process and how easily it would work in conjunction with their existing systems.
 
After speaking with Fintech, R.H. Barringer contacted WCS, their route accounting vendor. WCS also explained how the Fintech interface would meet their integration and automation needs. They also spoke to other WCS wholesalers that were already using Fintech's services, and gained further confirmation of Fintech's proven solutions. After contacting some of their chain retailers, they found that their retail customers were overwhelmingly in favor of using Fintech, and to Rick and Gail's satisfaction, many of their current customers were already utilizing Fintech's services. In addition, they were thoroughly impressed with the courteous and knowledgeable Fintech staff. This ultimately compelled them to enlist the services of Fintech.
 
Fintech now provides R.H. Barringer Distributing a complete solution for electronic funds transfer (EFT). In addition, Fintech provides them retailer notification services as well as taking aggressive measures to market Fintech's EFT services, enabling new retail customers in their vicinity. These are among the many services Fintech provides them.
 
How it Works
Deliveries: Utilizing Fintech's EFT service, R.H. Barringer makes a delivery to a retail location and drops off the goods. With an invoice copy in hand, the driver can now have any authorized person available sign the invoice (for State records requirements). Their driver now takes and leaves a copy of the invoice with the retail location. This is now an irrevocable agreement to pay the invoice. Next, their driver goes onto their next destination. When the driver returns at the end of the day, R.H. Barringer sends the invoice data to Fintech, a report is sent to their participating retail locations and they are paid the next day. Compared to their old delivery process, which slowed the retailer as well as R.H. Barringer, this is a much faster, more efficient method of delivering. With the ability to now go to each location without waiting for payment, R.H. Barringer significantly increases their productivity and revenue.
 
Invoice & Payment Processing: A typical processing day begins in the early morning when R.H. Barringer performs their end-of-day processing. During this time, their WCS route accounting software automatically generates the EFT invoice extraction file. With the help of Fintech's FTX Internet Services, they are able to quickly import the data file, prepare it for transmission, and send it to Fintech via their Internet connection. By mid-afternoon, R.H. Barringer receives the payment remittance file back from Fintech and it is uploaded to their WCS host system. Finally, WCS automatically matches the payment file up against the correct EFT invoices and posts them to accounts receivable. Altogether, an employee at R.H. Barringer will only spend about 5 minutes a day for the entire Fintech EFT process for a large number of retailers. With their former EFT process, their comptroller was spending approximately one hour per day -and this for only a handful of accounts.
 
Compared to their past EFT process, R.H. Barringer's daily EFT processing is now faster, more efficient, streamlined, reliable and secure with Fintech.
 
"Fintech's EFT service is a tremendous time and cost saver for us in the field. It saves our people time and reduces paperwork errors every day. The service is very simple to use and very reliable. If we have any questions or problems, the support from Fintech personnel is excellent," said Rick Craig, vice president, operations for R.H. Barringer.
 
Time + Money = Real Savings
With the implementation of Fintech's EFT solutions, the cost savings realized by R.H. Barringer services are sizable. Since joining Fintech, they are processing their invoice payments with 9% of their retail customers, 10 times more than with their previous process. This has resulted in over $10,000 a year in time and money savings during their account sales and delivery process, which also results in tangible time savings for their sales and delivery personnel. They no longer experience the costly errors and problems that once occurred during everyday transactions. Now if they encounter a problematic retailer refusing payment for beer deliveries, Fintech is there to back them up.
 
Rick Craig added some advice for his fellow beer distributorships not using Fintech's services:
 
"If your state allows EFT, you really need to look at Fintech. The time and cost savings for your people in the field are real. Retailers love the simplicity and security of paying for their beer deliveries with EFT, and Fintech will make a large number of major retailers available to you for EFT right off the bat! If you have dismissed Fintech as a solution in the past, you owe it to yourself to take another look! There aren't many services or products that can honestly save your sales and delivery team significant time and headaches every single day. Fintech's EFT solution does exactly that!"
 
Learn more about how Fintech can "keep it simple" for you - securely saving your business time and money by paying your invoices electronically.
 
Invoice payment solutions for alcohol distributors | Invoice payment solutions for alcohol retailers