How shifl Uses Melio to Speed Up Vendor Payments by 300%
shifl – A digital innovator in the freight forwarding industry
shifl is a global freight forwarding company driving international shipping into the digital age. With advanced online solutions, shifl’s customers can seamlessly navigate shipments from the point of online booking through to the final destination, all from one screen.
Founder and CEO Shabsie Levy imagined shifl after realizing that traditional freight forwarding includes many manual processes, inefficiencies with outside agents and 3rd parties, and lagging communications that can easily be automated.
He set out to create a robust end-to-end experience that lets shifl’s customers, mostly importers, navigate shipments online, track each touchpoint live, and pay for it all with a credit card without any credit card processing fees. Thanks to a worldwide network of offices and “out of the box” thinking, shifl continually streamlines processes and passes savings on to their customers.
The challenge
As a company aiming to deliver online operations in an offline world, shifl searched for tools to enable its vision and eliminate the costly mistakes of traditional manual freight forwarding. One critical component was to provide same-day proof of payment in a cost-effectively at each station of the shipment’s lifecycle (warehouses, exam stations, customs brokers, etc.), to get their customers’ freight released quickly.
With the outbreak of COVID-19 and influx of imports for related emergency equipment shifl also needed a reliable but flexible payment solution to onboard new vendors and partners, rapidly adapt to the turbulence of the pandemic, and seize new opportunities.
The solution
Since shifl processes its bills through QuickBooks, it wanted a payment solution that works seamlessly with QuickBooks, as well as being able to furnish same-day proof-of-payment.
Melio’s digital bill payment solution with QuickBooks integration fits them like a glove. shifl can create invoices in their proprietary software, sync them to QuickBooks, and live-sync to Melio for payment. The process saves them about 2 hours of administrative work for every team member involved in the payment flow.
“Melio has made it super easy for shifl to facilitate ACH payments with every shipment that we manage. We are paying many different fees on behalf of our customers for each shipment, so the fact that we can make payments in the morning and provide proof of payments on the same day is an enormous competitive advantage. We have been able to expedite our payments 2-3 times quicker than before, and most importantly, we eliminated the costly inefficiencies that were traditionally involved in the industry. ”
Onboarding new partners with confidence
With the outbreak of the coronavirus, shifl has seen an influx of new business. Melio has played a key part in shifl’s ability to quickly onboard new partners and ensure a simple, reliable, and efficient way of transferring payments quickly.
Delegating payment roles
With new opportunities, shifl has also been able to scale its team. Melio allows shifl to delegate payment responsibilities, providing more operational efficiency, transparency, and better control over the payment process.
“When the coronavirus hit, we needed to pivot quickly to accommodate the capricious nature of the pandemic. With our office staff working from home and a new influx of urgent shipping needs, we were able to utilize Melio to ensure that our new and existing partners receive payments efficiently and reliably, allowing us to easily adjust to new situations as they arise”
