“We added users without adding a single login to our accounting system.”
The Head of Finance and Commercial at a national architectural hardware and digital access brand, on managing receivables across a very large dealer network. The company has asked not to be named.
We sell architectural hardware, digital locks and safes, kitchen and wardrobe fittings, glass hardware and bath fittings across India, through a dealer network that runs into thousands of counters and several brands. At that spread, receivables are not one number. They are hundreds of numbers, sitting across regions, territories and product lines.
Our difficulty was timing more than anything else. By the time the accounts team had compiled a proper region-wise and brand-wise outstanding position, it was already a few days old, and we were making decisions on it anyway. Out in the field, a sales manager visiting a dealer had no way to check what that dealer owed us or where his credit stood. Growing the network only made it worse, because scaling that kind of visibility through more people in the accounting system was never realistic or safe.
FinLens changed the arithmetic on that. It reads our existing Tally, nothing more, and each manager is scoped to his own territory and his own dealer list. He asks a question in plain language and gets the outstanding, the ageing or the statement on his phone in a few seconds, and can share it with the dealer as a PDF straight away. He cannot see anyone else’s territory, and he does not touch our accounting system at all.
So we ended up doing something that sounds contradictory. We gave financial visibility to a lot more of our people, and at the same time we did not create a single new login into our books.
The follow-up on collections has become noticeably more disciplined, because the conversation now happens with the dealer while the numbers are on the table. And our central accounts team is fielding far fewer report requests than it was, even though the dealer base has grown since.
RD Paytech built this around the way our business actually runs, not the other way around, and they have been quick every time we have needed them.
How FinLens works
Head, Finance & Commercial
A national architectural hardware and digital access brand (name withheld on request)
