How e-sign and payments should work on a car shipping order

Every booked car shipping order needs a signed contract, a deposit, a carrier price and a record of who paid whom. A broker CRM should keep all of them on the order page, send the contract and charge the deposit from that same page, and show where the order stands from Not Signed to Delivered.

What a car shipping order should hold

A quote becomes an order when the customer says yes. From then on, the order needs every number and date the desk, the carrier and the customer will ask about.

On a typical order the customer pays a deposit to the broker and the rest to the driver at delivery. With the tariff, the deposit and the COD on one screen, a salesperson can tell a customer what they owe the driver without opening a spreadsheet.

Sending the contract for e-signature

The contract should go out from the order and come back signed online. A customer who has to print a page, sign it and send a photo will put it off.

Most orders go out on your standard contract. Some need different terms, such as a changed date or a special condition, and the CRM should let you change the terms before you send instead of editing a file by hand. Once the customer signs, the order should record the date. Orders still waiting for a signature belong in their own list, so somebody chases them every day.

Taking the deposit by card

Charge the deposit on the order it belongs to. A card payment taken in a separate app has to be matched to the order by hand, and the match goes wrong when two customers pay the same amount on the same day.

Keep a log of every attempt, declined cards included. When a customer says they paid, the log shows each try and what happened to it.

Logging payments between customer, broker and carrier

Money on a car shipping order moves in four directions, and the CRM should record all of them:

• Customer to broker: the deposit, and sometimes more.
• Customer to carrier: the COD the driver collects at delivery.
• Carrier to broker: when the driver collected more than the carrier's pay and owes the difference.
• Broker to carrier: when the broker collected the money and pays the carrier.

With all four on the order, you can answer who owes whom from the order itself. A customer asked to pay an account that is not the company's is a separate risk, covered in payment fraud protection for brokers.

Order stages from Not Signed to Delivered

Each stage should be a list you can open. Whoever chases signatures works Not Signed, and whoever finds carriers works Posted CD. Posting should happen from the same order, which is covered in what a Central Dispatch integration should do. Leader CRM also keeps Issues, Hold and Archived tabs next to these.

Marking an order as lost

Some signed orders cancel before a carrier moves the car. Mark those orders as lost. Leader CRM leaves lost orders out of the dispatched numbers, so the owner dashboard does not count a load that never moved.

E-sign and payment questions to ask on a demo

• Can I send the contract from the order, and change the terms before I send it?
• Does the order record the signed date?
• Can I charge the deposit by card on the order, and is every attempt logged?
• Can I log a payment the customer made to the carrier, and one the carrier owes us?
• Do tariff, deposit, carrier pay and COD sit together on one order?
• Can I post to Central Dispatch from the same order?
• What happens to my numbers when an order is lost?

Take one order you booked last week and list where its contract, deposit, carrier pay and COD live today. If that list names more than one app, ask to see the same order built in the CRM on your demo. Leader CRM's version is on the orders and dispatch page.