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House-Hasson Hardware is moving to stop issuing checks, invoices, and statements to its vendors and dealers.
Not in the mail, anyway.
“We’re phasing in a program we call ‘go green’ through the balance of 2015 to make all payments electronically to vendors and to eliminate paper invoices and payments to dealers,” says Don Hasson, president of House-Hasson Hardware. “Everything will be electronically transmitted.”
The program was highlighted at House-Hasson’s October 2015 dealer market in Lexington, Kentucky, which is where the company’s hardware store and lumberyard dealers and vendors could choose to sign up for the program.
House-Hasson plans to have vendors completely on the program by the end of 2015; dealers will be added as they choose to convert to the paperless process.
“This benefits everyone in the chain,” says Hasson. “The administrative burden is reduced, checks aren’t delayed or lost in the mail and with electronic transmittal, dealers can check their House-Hasson online accounts to see that money has been received.”
The transition to electronically transmitted payments will save House-Hasson thousands of dollars in postage alone, he says.
“We have more than 700 vendors, and each of them receives at least a dozen mailings from us a year, sometimes with multiple pages,” Hasson says. “That’s a lot of work to produce, compile and send. Now it will all be put on computer and sent by pushing a button.
“It also eliminates phone calls to check on the status of payments and if someone has a question, they can search it quickly on the computer without us having to look through the paperwork and the caller having to wait while we do so.”
About 20 percent of House-Hasson’s more than 2,000 dealers no longer receive paper invoices or payments by check. Registration will be conducted with dealers throughout the year and at each dealer market, as in Lexington.
“When we first talked about this, it was solely considered from a cost-saving standpoint of mailing and the envelopes, printing, stuffing and postage,” Hasson says. “But as we considered it further, we saw the broader range of benefits to everyone in our system.”
Hasson said he hopes to have 50 percent of dealers in the paperless program by the end of 2016.
House-Hasson has more than 2,500 dealers in 17 states and the Caribbean Basin.
