The Challenge
WORLDPAC was formed in 1995 as a result of several acquisitions of companies spanning over 30 years of service in the import aftermarket. They import and distribute original equipment and quality aftermarket replacement automotive parts for the independent service professional. They support their many customers with 100+ strategically located facilities across the country.
In the beginning, WORLDPAC mostly relied on their drivers to hand deliver customer invoices with deliveries. However, the amount of time it took to get paid was taking its toll. They wanted to provide customers with alternative options for receiving, viewing and paying invoices. Furthermore, their team lost time by manually processing payments made with single-use, virtual credit cards. The WORLDPAC team needed solutions to lower DSO and expedite company cash flow while providing customers with the flexibility to pay how they wanted.
The Solution
In 2016, WORLDPAC partnered with Billtrust for their automated invoicing and payments solutions. They implemented a customer portal so that customers could view and pay their invoices on their terms. If customers wanted to receive invoices via mail, email, fax or their portal, Billtrust could make it happen. Over time, WORLDPAC turned to Billtrust for additional support including joining Billtrust’s Digital Lockbox to automate virtual card capture and turning on the account summary screen, which allows customers to pay on documents simply grouped together by aging buckets with a single click.
“Billtrust Digital Lockbox has been a huge timesaver, and with it, our customers are paying us faster. I even encouraged our sister company to use it as well. The payment portal has been very helpful.”
Susan Grass, VP Customer First and Credit
The Results
Through Billtrust, WORLDPAC’s customers have flexibility in how they can view and pay their invoices. While Billtrust is mailing 51% of their bills, 49% of their customers are receiving a form of electronic invoice. With the account summary screen, 27% of invoices are being paid digitally – an 80% increase in just three months, and their average DSO is now only 27 days. When it comes to Digital Lockbox, automated payments through the network are made 3.5 days faster than other channels, and because of Level 2 and 3 card processing data and large ticket interchange optimization, they are saving an additional $170,000 a year in credit card processing fees. In the first half of 2020, Digital Lockbox automated over $16 million in customer payments.
