Dealer order and claim tracking for farm machinery makers

Most makers start with a dealer list in one workbook, an order sheet in another and a claims folder in a third. Every answer needs three files. How much does the northern zone dealer owe in unpaid invoices and uncleared cheques, and which hydraulic pump claims are still pending approval?

Build the dealer account first. Everything else hangs from it. Keep it plain. Give each dealer a code, a legal name, the territory, the sales owner, the security held, such as post-dated cheques or a bank deposit, and the payment terms agreed.

Add every outlet under the dealer as a ship-to address, because a dealer with three showrooms still has one credit limit. Orders and claims name the outlet, but the money, the security, the cheque history all sit on the parent account, where one person can see them.

A limit kept in a spreadsheet is a suggestion. It gets ignored. A limit checked at order entry is a control. The order screen should show the limit, open invoices, uncleared cheques and the value of tractor and rotavator orders already booked but not yet invoiced.

If the new order breaks the limit, hold it. Do not reject it. The sales manager sees the hold, phones the dealer principal and either collects a transfer or approves an exception with a name and reason on the record.

Review limits each quarter. Do not wait for a bounced cheque.

Dealers order tractors, rotavators, power tillers, seed drills and sprayers in different ways: some send a list on WhatsApp before sowing, and others phone the zone office. Put every channel into one order form with model, variant, paint colour, quantity, month wanted and the accessories that must ship with the machine, such as a plough.

Production should see the same lines. When an order says a rotavator with a six foot blade, the planner needs that, not a note saying large rotavator that someone must decode by phone. Lines that cannot be built in the requested month go back to the dealer with a revised date and a reason, such as a paint shortage.

Show the dealer one status. The stages: booked, scheduled, dispatched, invoiced. Fewer calls reach your desk, and the zone officer stops chasing production for dates that the system already holds on the order line itself.

A warranty claim begins with a serial number. The serial tells you the model, the build date, the invoice and the dealer who bought it, so nobody argues about warranty status. Without it the claim is an argument. With it, a fact.

Set the steps once. The dealer raises the claim with photos and the failed part, such as a gearbox shaft, a hydraulic lift cylinder or a PTO clutch. A service engineer checks it. A regional manager approves above a set value. Accounts then issues a credit note or dispatches a replacement, and each step records who acted and when, so nothing sits unseen in an inbox.

Request costly failed parts back. Record each return against the claim, with the date and the person who received it, so a credit is never issued twice for one fault.

At month end print or email a statement per dealer that lists invoices, payments received, claims credited and claims still open with their claim numbers. The dealer matches it against their own books, so disputes over a short payment, a wrong rate or a missing credit surface early, while the invoice is fresh.

Credited claims should reduce the outstanding balance on the same statement, because when they sit in a separate file, dealers feel they are paying twice. One page, one balance.

Start with your five largest dealers. Set up their accounts, limits, security and open claims this week, then add the remaining dealers zone by zone as each team learns the new order screen.