The Challenge
Ward Transport and Logistics is a family-owned and operated transportation company headquartered in Pennsylvania. Since it was established in 1931, the company has grown to more than 1,400 employees and expanded its presence across North America. Looking to scale for future growth, Ward needed to reduce manual work by automating credit card and ACH payment processing to make it easier for customers to pay. They also wanted to reduce credit card interchange fees.
The Solution
Billtrust was identified as the ideal solutions provider to help them streamline their payments processes and get paid faster. Following a quick implementation, Ward was up and running with Billtrust AP Portal Delivery, enabling payment flexibility by processing and automatically gathering remittance for ACH, wire transfer and credit card payments while delivering invoices into over 200 leading AP portals.
They immediately began to see a business impact, specifically from Billtrust Digital Lockbox’s bi-directional portal which allows them to automatically capture and apply customer payments. ACH volume has also skyrocketed with AP Portal Delivery, which captures and consolidates emailed remits for “decoupled” ACH payments. Being able to view remittances as they are processed by Billtrust, including email images and attachments, it’s now simple for their AR team to resend receipts and download detailed remittances files in CSV format for one or multiple days, which is extra helpful at the end of the month.
The Results
Since working with Billtrust and digitizing payments across the entire business, they have seen improved internal efficiencies, cash flow and payment accuracy. When Ward’s ACH remittance volume initially ramped in late 2021, they were processing $2M per month of less than 100 payments. With the ability to easily compare ACH remittances to bank deposits, they now average $12M and more than 1,600 payments a month in ACH remit. With Billtrust they’ve automated more than $80M in payments and saved more than 1,300 hours in manual labor. The team looks forward to continued success with Billtrust and is now considering Billtrust Collections as an addition to their AR suite.
“Almost immediately following our Billtrust implementation, we saw excellent customer acceptance to pay through our portal. It’s provided a great experience for our customers as well as employees. What was taking our team hours a day to reconcile payments now just takes minutes.”
Tim Mikesic
CFO, Ward Transport and Logistics
