How Can I Improve My Truck Company’s Cash Flow?
With any business, cash flow is one of the most important factors in keeping your doors open. Without sufficient cash flow, you can’t pay bills, run payroll, or even keep your lights on. Without a positive cash flow, companies would be shut down in a very short amount of time. Maximizing cash flow is something that all managers should strive to achieve.
In the shipping industry, there are a lot of expenses that come up in regards to getting shipments out – driver salary, fuel, temporary warehousing of shipments, truck wear and tear, and more. This is why it is so important for transport managers to make sure they are getting paid as early as possible, to keep the company’s cash flow in check.
Freight visibility may not seem like a good cash flow tool at first, but it actually does provide insight to help with cash management decisions. Here are several examples of how freight management technologies like freight visibility can help with cash flow:
Truck Tracking & Delivery
By tracking your trucks in real-time you’ll know exactly when it arrives at its destination, and if your driver has an app that can upload a POD directly to you, you’ll be able to invoice for services much faster. Before having the ability to directly track trucks and digitally upload POD’s, transport managers would have to wait for manual updates from their drivers via check calls and have to wait until driver can find fax machine or mail in his bills.. This would slow down the invoicing process, and ultimately slow the cash flow.
Automated Driver Updates
With a freight visibility app, you can get automated updates regarding the status of your driver at any time. With this information you can help make your driver scheduling more cost-friendly, by seeing which drivers work in the most time efficient manner. This knowledge can then be used to make your shipments run at a higher operating efficiency, maximizing cash flow.
Inventory Holding
If you find yourself having to temporarily store items for clients, it helps to have real-time inventory tracking that is synced with your freight management system. With this feature, you’ll be automatically updated on the status of your inventory holdings, which will allow you to manage the storage facility better and more efficiently, again increasing cash flow by reducing expenses.
Overall, there are numerous ways that freight tracking solutions can help transport managers increase their cash flow by increasing their business’ overall operating efficiency. This can reduce costs, and also provide the ability to send out invoices faster. With a higher cash flow, you’ll be able to run your business with a little less stress.