Case studies / Building Materials Trading
Case studyCredit control and delivery for a building materials trader
A building materials trader with its own fleet and thousands of contractor accounts put credit limits, multi-unit pricing and proof of delivery into one Odoo order flow.
Overview
A regional trading group selling cement, steel, timber, blocks and finishing materials to contractors of every size. It runs several branches with yards, its own delivery fleet and a sales team that knows most of its customers by first name.
Scale. Five branches with yards, thousands of contractor accounts, many units of measure per product and large credit exposure concentrated in a few hundred active projects at any time.
The challenge
Contractor credit was the business's biggest financial risk, and it was tracked in spreadsheets. Finance updated them weekly from the accounting package, while branches kept taking orders in between. A large customer could be well over its limit before anyone noticed.
Building materials are sold in awkward units. Steel moves by the tonne, the bar and the metre; blocks by the piece and the pallet; cement by the bag and the bulk load. Conversions were done by hand on quotations, and mistakes went straight into prices.
Delivery paperwork was slow to come back from site. Drivers returned signed notes at the end of the day or the end of the week, and invoices waited for them. Missing or illegible notes fed disputes about what had actually been delivered.
Many contractors ran several projects at once, but their account was a single balance. Sales could not tell whether a customer was paying promptly on one project and falling behind on another.
The owners wanted to keep the personal service that had built the business while tightening the controls that protected it. Any new process that slowed down a trusted customer's order would simply be bypassed.
The solution
Credit limits and approvals now sit inside the Odoo order flow. When an order would push a customer over its limit, it routes to an approver with the customer's exposure and payment history on screen, and a decision takes minutes rather than a phone chase.
Every product carries its units and conversions, so a quotation in pieces, pallets or tonnes produces the same price. Sales staff no longer need a calculator, and the warehouse picks in the unit the yard actually handles.
The workflow runs from quotation to delivery to invoice without re-keying. Delivery scheduling uses fleet records and vehicle tracking, and drivers capture proof of delivery on a mobile device, which triggers the invoice as soon as the customer signs.
Customer accounts can be split by project, so credit and payment behaviour are visible at the level contractors actually manage their money. Customers can see orders, deliveries and statements in the self-service portal without calling the branch.
The engagement
- Seven months
- Five specialists
- Credit and pricing rules, Odoo sales, inventory, delivery and accounting, a customer self-service portal, five integrations and a branch-by-branch rollout.
Integrations
- Banks and payment collection services
- Vehicle tracking
- Supplier catalogues and price updates
- Customer self-service portal
- Accounting and tax reporting
How we delivered it
- 01
Agree the rules
Five weeks
We agreed credit rules with sales leaders first, then with finance, and mapped every unit of measure and conversion in use across the branches. Exceptions were written down and owned, not left to judgement on the day.
- 02
Configure and build
Ten weeks
We configured multi-unit pricing, credit approvals in the order flow and delivery workflows in Odoo, and built the customer self-service portal. Vehicle tracking and bank collection services were connected in the same stage.
- 03
Migrate and train
Five weeks
Customers, open balances and orders were migrated and reconciled. Branch teams were trained on real customer scenarios, including what to do when a good customer hits a limit on a Friday afternoon.
- 04
Branch rollout
Ten weeks
Branches went live one at a time. For the first weeks, the credit team reviewed every exception daily with branch managers, adjusting limits where the rules had been set too tight.
Results
- Credit exposure visible by customer and project
- Fewer quantity disputes on invoices
- Invoices raised from proof of delivery, not paperwork
- One unit-of-measure model across all branches
Credit exposure is now visible by customer and by project, and it is acted on early. Branch managers see limits before they quote, and finance reviews exceptions daily instead of discovering problems at month-end.
Invoice disputes about quantities fell. With conversions handled by the system and signed proof of delivery attached to every invoice, the remaining disputes are about genuine issues on site, and they are settled faster.
Delivery proof now triggers invoicing, so billing no longer waits for paperwork to travel back from site. Cash arrives sooner, and the accounts team spends less time matching notes to orders.
Because sales helped write the credit rules, branch staff use them rather than work around them. The owners kept the personal service they valued, with a clear view of the risk behind it.
Our sales team wrote the credit rules with finance in the room. That is the only reason they follow them.
What made the difference
Credit rules were agreed with sales first, so they were accepted and not bypassed.
