For food & beverage distributors, producers, and service providers, offering payment terms isn’t just a convenience—it’s essential for acquiring and retaining customers. Restaurants, retailers, and cafes rely on payment terms to manage cash flow, and distributors that make the process difficult risk losing business.
- Over 82% of B2B buyers consider access to invoice terms important when choosing a new supplier.
- More than 50% of buyers say that slow payment-term approval is a reason to choose another vendor. If your competitors approve them faster, you lose the sale.
Yet, the credit application process is often slow, manual, and frustrating. Many buyers are required to fill out lengthy forms, track down trade references, and wait days—sometimes weeks—for approval. This friction doesn’t just frustrate customers; it actively drives them to competitors.
Why It Matters: The Impact of Credit Onboarding on Customer Acquisition
If your credit onboarding process is slow or cumbersome, you’re missing out on sales. We recently helped a new restaurant, Che Fico Pizzeria, apply for credit with multiple vendors, and the experience revealed several key challenges:
- Only 3 out of 18 vendors had credit applications that were easy to access and complete online. Most vendors required filling out a contact form or emailing/texting a sales rep just to request an application.
- For several vendors, it took 3-4 emails over 2-3 weeks to obtain and complete the credit application—even the vendors Che Fico had existing relationships with from their other restaurants
- Some vendors required unique information that wasn’t readily available, such as lease payment details, which caused further delays and back-and-forth communication.
Credit application fixes that help you win more customers
A slow, outdated credit application process isn’t just a minor inconvenience—it’s a barrier to growth. Here’s how food & beverage distributors can remove friction and win more customers.
1. Put the customer first with a seamless, digital credit application
Replace paper forms and PDFs with a modern, digital application process. This improves your customer’s experience—removing the need for them to print & fill out, and scan the agreement—and increases the chances they fill it out immediately upon receiving it instead of waiting until they get to a printer.
Making it customer-friendly requires more than just a digital form:
- Keep forms short and focused on essential information.
- Provide clear instructions and tooltips to guide users.
- Enable digital signatures to eliminate paperwork delays.
One of the biggest pain points we encountered was simply locating the credit application. Many vendors did not have an application readily available on their website, forcing buyers to email sales reps or fill out generic contact forms just to request one. This added delays and extra steps.
Best practice: Make credit applications easily accessible on your website. A simple “Apply for Credit” link in the main navigation or a dedicated page under “New Customers” can reduce friction and speed up the process.
2. Leverage 3rd party data for instant underwriting
Using external data sources can help speed up credit approvals while reducing risk:
- Bank data: Instant access to a buyer’s average daily balance and net cash flow enables real-time underwriting without the need for lengthy paperwork.
- Credit bureau data: This can provide some insight, but coverage is often limited for small businesses like restaurants and cafes.
- Trade references: This can be useful, but references often slow down the process and are difficult to verify in real-time.
3. Capture Payment Information During Onboarding
Don’t wait until the first invoice is due to collect payment details. Capturing payment information as part of the credit application helps you get paid faster—and sets up the relationship for success on day one.
- Make it secure: Use a PCI-compliant platform to safely collect and store bank account or card information.
- Give customers choice: Let them choose how they want to pay—ACH, credit card, or other methods—to fit their business needs.
- Set up autopay: Encourage customers to agree to be charged automatically on a recurring basis for open invoices. It reduces missed payments and manual follow-up for your team.
By tying payment collection to onboarding, you reduce admin work later and create a smoother customer journey from application to first invoice and first payment.
4. Fast, Transparent Internal Process
A streamlined internal workflow ensures that approvals don’t get stuck in review. Best practices include:
- Using a centralized system to track application status in real-time.
- Apply consistent logic to evaluating new customers and have clear rules for how to handle new businesses or companies that are related to any existing customer (like a new restaurant in the same group)
- Setting clear escalation procedures for higher-risk customers
Sales teams play a crucial role in onboarding new customers. Give them visibility into the credit approval process so they can:
- Follow up with customers to ensure smooth onboarding.
- Set expectations on timelines and next steps.
- Address any roadblocks that might delay approvals.
How Wholesail Helps Distributors Onboard Customers Faster
At Wholesail, we help food & beverage distributors digitize and streamline the credit application process with our New Customer Form.
Our solution includes:
- Digital applications: Replace PDFs and paper forms with an intuitive, online application process.
- Easy for customers: 70% of applications are completed in under 30 minutes.
- Automated bank references: Instantly verify a buyer’s financial health using real-time bank data, eliminating the need for slow trade references.
- Payment authorization forms: Make your onboarding process PCI-compliant and secure by collecting payment information through Wholesail.
- Faster credit approvals: Manage the credit approval process in a single centralized location. Use real-time insights to approve new customers in hours, not days.
- Sales visibility: Sales teams can keep track of applications in progress so they can follow up with customers should any delays come up.
By modernizing credit onboarding, distributors can win more customers, reduce risk, and grow sales—without adding friction to the process.