In distribution, the sale is not the hard part — the collection is. Credit is extended informally, outstanding lives in a statement nobody reads on the route, and the rep discovers an outlet's real position only when the distributor complains. Meanwhile the oldest invoices quietly age past the point of collectability. The fix is visibility at the moment of decision: every open rupee, invoice by invoice, on the device of the person standing in the outlet.
Outstanding on the route, not in the office
The xMatix mobile app carries each outlet's position into the visit: open invoices with amounts and ages, credit limit and headroom, promises made on previous visits. A rep who can see that the outlet is sitting on three overdue invoices has a different conversation than one who only came to take an order — and the system makes it the same conversation every rep would have, because the data is the same.
Collections against invoices, not against accounts
Collections are captured in the field — cash, cheque, digital — and allocated against specific invoices, offline if need be, through the same durable sync that carries orders. That allocation is what keeps the ageing honest: a lump-sum receipt parked "on account" hides exactly the old invoice that most needed paying. Receipts post into the ledger, so the field's collections and the accountant's books are one number, not two estimates. The full arc is order to cash — this page is the cash end of it.
Credit limits with teeth
Credit control lives in the order-to-cash flow: limits and terms on the customer, enforced when the order is placed — in the rep's app, on the portal, everywhere. An outlet over its limit or past its terms is gated at order time, with an approval path for deliberate exceptions, so credit policy is a system behaviour rather than a circular nobody enforces on a Friday evening.
Ageing that ties to the ledger
Because every collection allocates to an invoice and every invoice lives in the ledger, the ageing report is the same truth at every altitude: the rep's outlet view, the area manager's beat view, the CFO's receivables view. Collection productivity — promised versus collected, by rep and by beat — sits on the same dashboards as coverage and sales, and Sense will answer "which outlets over sixty days had a visit this week and still didn't pay?" without anyone building a report for it.
Common questions
Can reps see outlet outstanding and credit position offline?
Yes — open invoices with ages, credit limit and headroom sync to the device with the visit plan, so the position is visible in the outlet regardless of signal. Collections captured offline queue durably and post when connectivity returns.
How are field collections reconciled with accounts?
Each collection is allocated against specific invoices and posts into the same ledger the accountant works in. There is no separate "field collections sheet" to reconcile — the receivables view and the rep's view are the same records at different altitudes.
What happens when an outlet exceeds its credit limit?
The order is gated at capture time — in the rep's app and on the portal alike — with a defined approval path for exceptions. Policy is enforced where the order happens, not discovered in a report after the stock has shipped.
Does the system track payment promises?
Collection activity on a visit records what was collected and what was committed, so the next visit — by the same rep or a different one — opens with the promise on the screen. Broken promises age visibly instead of evaporating between visits.
Can cheque and digital collections be handled, not just cash?
Yes — collections record their instrument, and cheque realisation follows its own lifecycle, so a bounced cheque reopens the invoice rather than leaving the books pretending it was paid.