Often, companies view the contract management process as one standalone task.
This causes deposits and payments to be handled separately (even if you need both pieces for a deal).
Taking a signature and payment in two steps makes your company’s process complex, inefficient, and more costly.
Problems That Stem from a Bad Contract Management Process
Contracts protect you from financial losses.
Industries like manufacturing need a signed contract before a deal moves forward. Otherwise, they risk filling an order, only to have a customer back out of paying.
But a contract process isn’t always enough by itself. What happens when you use separate processes for contracts and payments?
Unsigned, Unpaid, or Delayed Deals
When it takes separate processes to fulfill a contract and payment, there are more chances for a sale to fall through.
- Some customers drag their feet signing contracts
- Some customers will sign, but never end up paying
Unsigned and unpaid sales slow down every other part of your business. You can’t fulfill an order, workers can’t proceed with a job, and deals can’t be completed.
How PDCflow can help
PDCflow’s all-in-one contract and payment software eliminates hangups between steps of the contract process.
- Send to one or multiple recipients
- Combine contract esignature with payments
- Send multiple documents in one request
With PDCflow, customers do everything you need them to, all in one request. Send your documents and get a payment and signature together.
Confusion Between Teams and Customers
Even if a customer signs and pays, poor contract management processes cause problems. For instance, a payment may not be connected to the right contract approval if the two aren’t part of the same workflow.
If you aren’t sure who has signed and who has paid, expect staff confusion and customer complaints.
How PDCflow can help
PDCflow’s software makes it easy to improve communication and track customer progress.
- Event notifications: alert your team when recipients have signed and completed their request.
- In-depth reporting: makes it easy to check on the status of your request or view the overall performance of your contracts and payments.
Extra Costs
Sending a contract from one platform and taking payments from another means you pay for two separate software systems. This is a waste of money.
It’s efficient—and more cost-effective—to use one tool your whole team can access.
How PDCflow can help
Save money with PDCflow by combining your processes.
- Create employee logins for everyone on the team, without paying extra per-seat
- Create unlimited templates for every type of customer workflow.
- Add everything you need in one request (documents, esignature, payments) to reduce how many messages you need to send.
Reduced Tracking Capabilities, Extra Work
When your company uses separate processes for contracts and payments, that means your staff have:
- Two different logins to remember
- Two different systems to learn how to use
- Two separate workflows to follow
When half of the work is done in one place and the other half is done in another, it’s hard to track customer progress.
How PDCflow can help
PDCflow’s software makes it easy for your team to track where your requests are in the contract management process, all in one place.
- One tool for everything: employees can create one message for a contract and payment together, without switching systems or learning two tools.
- Event notifications: alert your team with automated notifications when recipients have signed and completed a request.
- In-depth reporting: makes it easy to check on the status of your request, or view overall performance of your contracts and payments.
Contract and Payment Management Together
The ideal contract management process steps include a payment request in the contract workflow.
Here are the basic steps for sending a contact and payment request together with PDCflow:
1) Create the contract and payment request
- Choose your contract and payment request template from your PDCflow account.
- Add your customer’s email address or phone number. Upload a PDF of the contract.
- Add the payment amount for the required deposit. Click Send Flow.
2) Your customer receives the request
Your customer receives an email that can be customized with your company name and message. They click the unique URL to sign their contract and enter payment information.
3) Get real-time notifications
Sign up for notifications to know if a contract with a payment is completed, disputed, expired, or failed.
Benefits of PDCflow Contracts and Payments
PDCflow is ideal for sending a contract and payment request together.
Our flexible setup, automated tracking and reminders, and easy end-user experience offer many benefits to businesses:
- Reduced waiting time: When our customers take signatures and payments together, they shorten the time it takes to close sales.
- Fewer follow-ups: When recipients receive everything they need in one message, your company doesn’t need to chase down payments or follow up on unsigned contracts.
- Fewer manual processes: PDCflow’s automated reminders and event notifications make work easier for staff and reduce manual work.
- Stronger cash flow forecasting: When requests are easier to complete, more customers finish them successfully. PDCflow’s reliable requests make it simpler to forecast how much money you’ll be bringing in.
- Better customer experience: PDCflow’s simple user experience walks customers through requests quickly so they can sign and pay together. That way, they don’t need to watch for multiple messages in their inbox or work through two different workflows.
- Cleaner reporting and audit trails: With our Insights Reporting all-in-one system, companies don’t need to log into separate accounts to view a signed contract and track a payment. With reporting and detailed audit trails in one place, reconciliation and other back office tasks are easier than ever.
PDCflow Features
- Native payments: Payments are built into our system. With no plugins, access better functionality and cohesive reporting all in one place.
- Email and SMS: Send secure messages to customers in minutes through the channel they prefer.
- Multiple documents: Send up to five documents in one message to include any contracts, disclosures, or terms of service.
- Multiple recipients: Send requests to multiple recipients. Control signing order.
- Status tracking: Get automatic email notifications as your customer moves through the process for easier contract tracking.
- Reporting: Get an overview of company performance overall, or drill down to individual transactions for detailed information.
- Easy for customers: Mobile-friendly and simple for recipients to navigate.
- Fast implementation: Easy set up and free training from our award-winning Customer Success team.
Real PDCflow Customer Examples
Carlisle Wide Plank Floors
Carlisle Wide Plank Floors manufactures high-quality flooring both for direct-to-customer and business sales.
Before PDCflow, Carlisle used two separate vendors to send digital contracts and collect a deposit.
With PDCflow, Carlisle was able to:
- More easily satisfy high-end customers and provide white-glove service through a fast, secure, simple workflow.
- Simplify PCI compliance without storing sensitive payment information in their internal systems.
- Achieve a 74% completion rate of contracts with a payment
EastCoast Entertainment
EastCoast Entertainment is the largest full-service entertainment booking agency in the country.
Before implementing PDCflow, EastCoast accepted paper checks through the mail and credit card payments over the phone.
With PDCflow, EastCoast Entertainment’s agents and staff can always associate a contract number with a payment, saving time and reducing frustration for their accountants.
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- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -
Hannah Huerta, Marketing Specialist
Hannah Huerta is a Marketing Specialist at PDCflow. She creates content for the accounts receivable and payment industry.
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