It was January 2022, and the operations team at Smithey Ironware – an heirloom cookware company based out of Charleston, SC – was overwhelmed. The initially ecommerce-focused company had been expanding their wholesale business, with great success.

For Smithey, wholesale represented an opportunity to increase revenue, and also a create a new marketing channel — having potential customers encounter the company’s products in stores would pay dividends for ecommerce as well.

But as the wholesale business grew, a “clunky, inefficient system” for B2B payments became more and more of a burden. “It was tough on our team,” says Trevor, Smithey’s Director of Ecommerce. In fact, chasing down payments had become so much work that they weren’t sure they were considering pausing their wholesale expansion entirely.

What was going wrong? For one thing, the Smithey team was spending too much of their time chasing down small invoices. They were forced to switch their ordering system to pay-in-advance for smaller orders – potentially turning off some retailers and limiting their wholesale business. Add to that the time and hassle of applying incoming payments to the right invoices, the cost of eating the processing fees from credit card payments, plus the difficulty in getting a clear view of accounts receivable, and the company knew it had a problem.

Smithey needed a solution: a receivables system that would allow them to grow their wholesale business while bringing order to the chaos. They wanted to make it easy for their customers to pay — and cut down on the time they were spending chasing after late payments.

And it had to integrate seamlessly with Shopify, which powers Smithey’s business. "Our shipping software plays into Shopify but we always had an issue with the billing aspect."

With so much at stake, Trevor looked everywhere for a solution. After carefully considering the options, and consulting the recommendations of other ecommerce leaders, the company decided to try Streamlined — and they haven’t looked back.

What makes Streamlined perfect for Smithey? From automatically adding billing instructions into invoices, to the option to pass card fees along to customers, to receiving and automatically reconciling checks, Streamlined boosts efficiencies across their sales and AR.

The company no longer has to rely on an outside bookkeeping firm to manually chase their past due invoices: Streamlined’s tracking, reporting, and automated reminders have it covered.

For Smithey, the hassle of B2B payments was a major limiting factor for their wholesale growth, and now that’s gone. Streamlined means they can go after bigger sales, without worrying about how that growth will impact their team, or whether they can even handle it.

As Smithey’s Ecommerce Director says, "I know the opportunity to scale is there now. I’m not stressed about billing or accounts receivable. I know that it works!"