About Comcater
Comcater is a national supplier of commercial equipment, accessories, and services to restaurants, supermarkets, hotels and food service businesses across Australia. The company has just over 200 employees and around 1,400 to 1,500 active customers with balances each month.
Many of Comcater’s customers operate in hospitality and food services – high-risk sectors where business conditions can change quickly and credit needs to be monitored closely. For Comcater’s finance team, this makes accurate customer data, proactive monitoring and efficient onboarding essential to protecting cash flow and reducing exposure to bad debt.
“CreditorWatch has helped us move from paper-based credit applications to a much more proactive and consistent way of managing customer risk. ApplyEasy, PPSR registrations, monitoring alerts, and the Business Risk Index all give us better visibility across our customer base. That visibility has helped us improve efficiency, strengthen compliance, and reduce our DSO from around 57 days to 42 days”
– Kathy Wang, Finance Operations Manager at Comcater
The challenge
When Kathy Wang stepped into the Finance Operations Manager role at Comcater in November 2023, she identified an opportunity to modernise the company’s credit processes and improve visibility across its customer base.
At the time, Comcater’s customer onboarding and credit application processes were still highly manual. Credit applications were paper based, trade reference checks required manual follow-up, and customer records often contained incomplete or outdated information, including missing ABNs and unclear director details.
This made it difficult for the finance team to consistently assess customer risk, monitor changes in creditworthiness, and maintain strong compliance practices across such a large and diverse customer base.
Comcater was also looking to strengthen its use of PPSR registrations. Kathy noted that the business had not consistently registered PPSR interests against customers for several years, creating an opportunity to improve compliance and asset protection.
With approximately 1,400 to 1,500 active customers each month, Comcater needed a more efficient and proactive way to manage credit risk at scale.
A connected approach to credit risk
Comcater began using CreditorWatch more extensively to centralise customer credit information, improve onboarding and monitor ongoing customer risk. Kathy uploaded the active customer list into the CreditorWatch platform, allowing the finance team to monitor customer creditworthiness, and receive daily alerts should any client details change adversely.
Comcater also implemented ApplyEasy to move credit applications online. This helped replace paper-based processes with a more consistent digital workflow, giving the finance team better access to customer information, clearer terms and conditions and director guarantees where required.
At the same time, CreditorWatch supported Comcater with PPSR registrations, including a bulk upload of approximately 600 items. From January 2024, Comcater began using ApplyEasy and PPSR registrations together as part of its credit application process.
The company also uses CreditorWatch’s monitoring and alerts functionality to help identify customer risk signals, such as ATO tax defaults, invalid ABNs, outdated business information and other changes that may require closer attention from the accounts receivable team.
In addition, Comcater shares insights from CreditorWatch’s Business Risk Index with its sales team, customer service team, executive team and board. This gives teams across the business a shared view of emerging risk trends, particularly across industries relevant to Comcater’s customer base.
The impact of CreditorWatch
Since making greater use of CreditorWatch, Comcater has improved efficiency, strengthened compliance, and achieved a measurable improvement in cash flow performance. Including the below:
- Reduced DSO – Comcater’s average days sales outstanding reduced from approximately 57 days to 42 days after the business moved credit applications online and strengthened its approach to customer risk assessment.
- More efficient onboarding – ApplyEasy helped Comcater shift from paper-based credit applications to a more consistent online process. This improved the quality of information collected upfront, reduced manual administration for the accounts receivable team, and helped the business communicate requirements more clearly to customers.
- Stronger compliance and asset protection – With support from CreditorWatch, Comcater improved its use of PPSR registrations, including a bulk upload of approximately 600 items. This strengthened compliance and helped the business better protect its interests when supplying customers on credit.
- Earlier risk identification – CreditorWatch monitoring and alerts help Comcater identify changes in customer risk earlier. When alerts are triggered, the finance team can review the customer, contact them where appropriate, and take action before issues escalate.
- Better visibility across the business – CreditorWatch has helped Comcater create a shared view of customer and industry risk across finance, sales, service, customer service, the executive team and the board. The Business Risk Index has become a useful internal resource for discussing industry trends and emerging risks relevant to Comcater’s customer base.
- Improved insurance outcomes – Comcater’s use of CreditorWatch and online credit applications supported stronger conversations with its trade credit insurer and contributed to better premium outcomes.