In October 2022, new owners acquired Big Jims Garden Centre, located in New Plymouth, Taranaki, New Zealand. As part of the business handover process, the new owners were required to complete credit applications for over 100 suppliers. Each supplier mandated that the credit applications be printed, signed, scanned, and emailed back.
With the new Big Jims business having three directors separated by 400 km, completing over 100 credit applications proved extremely time-consuming. The process required over 250 hours of effort and involved printing and scanning thousands of pages.
One of Big Jims' directors, who has a background in software development, decided to build the Trade Terms platform to streamline the process. Within a week of its launch, more than 100 suppliers had verified and updated the information we held about them. This updated information was automatically saved to our Xero account, making the entire process worthwhile and saving countless hours of manually chasing businesses for updated details.
Today, Big Jims uses Trade Terms to digitally sign credit applications in seconds. All information about Big Jims is automatically shared with the accounting systems of new suppliers. Similarly, supplier information is automatically imported into Big Jims' Xero account—saving hours for every supplier onboarding.
Big Jims maintains approximately 300 suppliers at any given time, with new suppliers coming on board as others move on. Thanks to Trade Terms, our team can quickly onboard new suppliers, ensuring all necessary paperwork and accounting information is updated in seconds. We’ve eliminated the need for manual data entry and significantly reduced the risk of human error.