Handle streamlines the settlement and invoicing process through customizing fields, setting concurrent workflows, and optimizing document storage.
A challenge for many of our customers is that the customer transaction / deal data collected by sales is organized in a way that’s effective for the Sales team but not for the Settlement and Invoicing team. They’ve streamlined their sales processes with Handle Paperless Workflow and eSign, but they still need to streamline the transactional part of the workflow.
To solve this problem, we built a Settlement and Invoicing entity that can be completely designed around your organization’s process for transacting deals.
It consolidates the information from any data source including ERP, quoting applications, trade evaluations, purchase orders, and more.
It organizes data in a way that’s most useful for the purpose — settlement and invoicing.
It also saves time by centralizing your settlement process, to minimize bottlenecks, and automate manual tasks. For example, by triggering automation workflows around trade, warranty, title / registration, and much more.
1. Can you customize Handle’s Settlement / Invoicing screen?
Handle’s Layout Builder makes it possible to customize your screen on the fly. That allows us to quickly change fields, field names and requirements, and the way the page lays out.
Depending on the information you want to display, you can choose a 30%-70% layout or 50%-50%. For example, you can replace Comments with images of the purchase order or signed documents. Some organizations want to see all the documents in a specific order, and they want a specific settlement doc packet that excludes the customer documents.
Let us know what you want to view, and we can set up the display that works best for you.
2. Can you integrate multiple workflows into one centralized Settlement process?
Yes. You can have multiple mini-flows that spin off of your settlement and invoicing process.
For example, you might want to trigger a lien search process that has its own set of steps and runs simultaneously through another department. Or maybe the customer needs to purchase warranties or PowerGuard after the sale.
Your Settlement/Invoicing entity can include every stage of your process, including the requirements for that stage of the process, and the workflow can be either simultaneous or linear.
3. How do you create concurrent tasks or workflows?
This process is automated. We create the workflow to run in the background. When it identifies specific scenarios — such as a trade or a deal with trailers that need to be registered in certain states — it will trigger that process and alert the appropriate people that something needs to be done.
4. How do you assign settlement / invoice to the processor?
This depends on your organization’s process and how you make assignments.
For example, you can assign specific categories of deals to specific people — like multi-unit deals to one person and another category to someone else. We can create the categories and segmentation in the system, so they get pushed to the right people.
Alternatively, you can push them to a pool or queue of users. Each person can see what’s in the queue and select the ones that are in their skill set or specialty. They can then assign that deal to themselves and take care of it.
5. Can you attach settlement-related documents to the deal packet?
It’s common to add documents from outside vendors or financing groups to the packet. You can easily do that by uploading those documents to Handle and storing them in the document management system you have set up in the background.
6. Can you send the deal back to the salesperson for additional information?
Yes, you can do that through comments, custom stages, or flags within the system.
In the commenting section, you can type notes and message anyone related to the deal. You can add the salesperson, who is automatically emailed when there’s a new comment.
You can also set up custom stages or flags. When the deal is blocked or something is missing, an email will be sent automatically to the salesperson letting them know.
The goal is to manage the deal in one place and track what’s going on, what’s needed, and what the history has been without leaving the page.
7. Can you track settlement efficiency and performance?
Yes, with Handle’s time stamping and tracking capabilities, you can see where deals are getting stuck or where your process could be streamlined or improved.
You can track the timing of the deal — from when it was created to when it was completed. And you can track the average amount of time people spend on each stage of the settlement.
We can time stamp the moment when someone moves the deal from one stage to the next, so you know how long a deal is spending at each stage.
We can also track the people who worked on the deal at each stage. This shows you how efficient each person is and how many transactions they’re doing each day.
8. How is document storage handled?
You can connect Handle to one of three document management systems: Microsoft, Google, or AWS. And you can set up your own organization-owned file folder structure.
We have the ability to give documents a specific naming structure — like stock number and customer name — so people can go into the system and pull up those documents in an organized way.
9. Can you track outstanding balances and partial payments?
Yes, we can use calculatable fields to enter how much money has been paid and how much is still owed.
We can also display those numbers in separate buckets, which allows us to create a tile or dashboard of all the items that still have money owed on them, so you can assign someone to get those accounts moving.
10. Is Paperless Workflow required to use this module?
No, you can set up Settlement and Invoicing without the Paperless Workflow — but it’s not as efficient.
Paperless Workflow gives you a lot of efficiencies, allowing salespeople to fill out the forms and pass the data through. But you can still map out your settlement process and workflows and pull the data points from quotes, inventory items, and other documents.
11. Is there a charge for Settlement / Invoicing?
Yes, we need to evaluate your process and put together a fixed bid based on the customizations you need.
We have a standard template that helps us build your workflow quickly, but it needs to be customized for your workflow. Your cost depends on how big or complex your process is.
12. How do we get started?
Think about your invoicing and settlement process at a high level:
- Who’s involved?
- What are the steps they go through?
- Do you have any checklists or forms involved in the process?
- Do you want things to flow in a linear way, or do you want mini-flows to happen simultaneously?
Once you know what you need at a high level, you can reach out to us at https://texadasoftware.com/support/. We’ll meet to discuss and map your process. Then we’ll build it out for you.