Streamlining Invoice Management and Payment for professional construction builders
Enabling builders with credit accounts to easily and conveniently pay their invoices and statements while preserving billing advantages. This was achieved through seamless integration with building supply vendors' ERP systems. The project enhanced customer satisfaction and resulted in an increased revenue stream for Toolbx.
UX/UI Design
Growth
ERP Integration
TOOLBX provides an e-commerce storefront solution for building supply vendors, enabling them to showcase their catalog online and fulfill orders.
Anyone can create an account and start placing orders. However, suppliers also have customers with credit accounts at the store. This separate customer base consists of professional builders who order large quantities in bulk for their construction projects and have long-standing relationships with the suppliers.
How might we enable builders with credit accounts to conveniently access and pay their invoices and statements online, in addition to placing orders?
How might we improve the convenience of the payment experience compared to traditional methods (in-person or check mailing) while preserving builders' billing advantages and flexibility?
To effectively address the challenge outlined above, we must consider the needs of both dealers and builders
Understanding the builder's mental model
We learned that in the construction industry, every project is tied to a jobsite (address). This jobsite is used for organizational purposes when budgeting, placing orders, making payments, accounting, etc. Therefore, it's crucial for a good user experience to view all assets—including invoices—through the lens of projects.
Minimizing disturbance to the dealer’s process
To manage their day-to-day business activities—supply chain, procurement, accounting, etc.—dealers use ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software. To avoid adding friction and workload to the dealer's process, it is imperative that we leverage our integration expertise between the Toolbx platform and the ERP in use and ensure a seamless and accurate information exchange between the two systems.
Keeping the flexibility
The online payment experience should emulate all the benefits and flexibility builders currently enjoy with their dealers. These advantages include:
Term discount: A discount applied to an account receivable if payment is made within a specified period after invoice issuance (e.g., 5% discount if paid within 21 days).
Bulk Payment: Builders should have the flexibility to pay their entire balance, settle specific invoices, or make partial payments. They should also be able to group payments by project for better organization and accounting.
Ability to use their credit notes to settle payment.
Project list
We added a list of projects where we display:
The full project address.
The ERP job reference for easier communication with the dealer
The current running balance and the most recent statement balance.
Links to all project-related assets (invoices, credit notes, orders, and statements). Clicking these links would take the user to the asset list page, automatically filtered for the specific project.
Integrating Invoices and Credit Notes
Invoices and credit notes are displayed on the same screen, organized with tabs.
Each invoice (and credit note) contains a project tag, allowing users to quickly and easily differentiate between invoices from different projects.
Invoice component clearly displays the eligibility for a term discount on an invoice.
Unifying the context for invoices and credit notes
Builders can select and pay multiple invoices simultaneously or settle an individual one
Builders can select invoices and credit notes in the same context. Dealer does not automatically apply credit notes to the first upcoming invoice payment anymore.
A bottom bar overlays as soon as a selection is made. It sits at the bottom, spanning the full screen. It dynamically displays the following: the number of invoices selected and their sum, the number of credit notes selected and their sum, and the total amount to pay including any applicable discounts.
Mobile
Desktop
This project was successfully deployed, satisfying both builders and dealers. The results included:
Reduced time spent on manual operations.
Decreased paperwork.
Streamlined payment processing
Enhanced flexibility in credit note utilization
Improved accounting management
The success of this project led to the creation of a new, untapped revenue stream for the company. Many dealers already had online storefronts and weren't interested in purchasing the all-in-one Toolbx solution. However, they lacked an invoice management and payment processing portal for their customers with credit accounts and found our implementation met their needs. As a result, we began offering this module as a separate purchase, leading to increased revenue and an expanded customer base.
My time at Toolbx involved working on other projects such as cataloguing, user verification, fraud check, user permissions, finance dashboard.
For a deeper dive on this project or any other one, you are welcome to reach out at mfessi.connect@gmail.com