So you’ve chosen to work with Integra for your print management needs, and you’re at the credit check step. Well first, allow us to congratulate you on making a fantastic business decision. Sure, we’re a little biased, but we’re thrilled about opportunities to work with new clients, and you are no exception.
Now, about that credit check. Why do we need so much information, and why are we checking your credit in the first place?
Well, it might seem obvious, but the first reason we’re looking at your credit history is to find out your creditworthiness. We love helping a vast array of businesses and have since our launch in 2005, but to ensure we can continue doing so, we need to be able to protect our own company first and foremost by assessing who counts as low, medium and high risk.
That’s probably the reason you already knew though, right?
We actually have a slew of other purposes in mind when we collect information on a client’s business credit, many of which have to do with the client’s satisfaction and future with Integra. Keep reading to learn the top four and find out how you can speed up the process and what you can expect along the way.
1. Protecting Our Company and Business Model
At this point in the buying journey, you’ve likely learned many of the differences of working with a print broker over a print shop. What that means for you is that you can rely on us to find the products, prices and procedures that work for your budget and help you meet your goals.
What it means for us is a little bit more complicated.
At Integra, our top goal is to streamline print work for our clients. We lean on a wide range of print partners with specialized skills and equipment in house so that we can make sure your needs are met efficiently no matter what they happen to be. Even if you need to expand your print needs down the line, you’ll be able to do so with Integra, because we’ve garnered close relationships with vendors we trust.
But to maintain those working relationships, we have to make sure our vendors and printers trust us right back. As a result, we need to make sure we get payment to each printer involved in the process of each client’s job. These printers help ensure that we can meet tight deadlines, make projects happen within strict budgets and deliver on the quality customers have come to expect from us every single time.
In short, they’re a big part of what it means to work with Integra Graphics Synergy.
So, while we’d love to be able to trust every company that comes our way requesting services, we know we have more than just our bottom line to protect — we also have to protect the relationship with printers we work with by making sure their payments are accurate and on time.
2. Determining the Payment Terms We Can Reasonably Extend
When a company shows high creditworthiness — in other words, that they have a history of paying their past bills without exceeding deadlines — we know there’s a great chance they’ll follow through on payments with Integra as well. Therefore, we feel safe offering more flexibility in our terms:
- New customers: If you’re brand new and choose to work with us without a credit check, we’ll request half of your payment up front (when you sign your purchase order) and half on delivery, (before the products ship out from our facility). This same policy holds if you agree to a credit check but need your work done before it’s able to clear.
- Good credit customers: If your credit check comes back clean, we’ll likely offer 30-day terms for your project up to the amount of your creditworthiness. Any additional amount will need to be paid upfront. Even if you’ve agreed to half payment up front and half on delivery but your credit check comes back sparkling clean before one or both payments are made, we’ll generally provide the option of 30-day terms for the remainder of what’s owed.
- Short credit history: Some clients are brand new in their industry, and we’re well aware that everyone has to start somewhere. Assuming no red flags come up in your credit history, we can usually extend 10- to 30-day terms if other factors, like your trade references, come back clean. If we can’t, we’ll expect half up front and half on delivery.
- Bad credit customers: We wish we could trust everything every business had to say. Unfortunately, that’s not realistic, and we can’t extend credit to just anyone. If your credit is poor but you still want to work with us, you’ll need to either pay entirely up front, or pay half up front and half on delivery.
Note: Terms will begin when your invoice arrives, so you may have a few extra days worth of wiggle room between receiving the products in your print job and your term period starting.
3. Streamlining Your Next Print Project
Let’s say you ask for a small print job now and pay in one go. You can fill out the initial part of our new customer paperwork this time around and avoid the credit check altogether, but what if you want to use us for a larger job down the line? Maybe you want t-shirts, hats, pens and a catalog printed in one month. We can handle all of the above along with a wide variety of other marketing needs, but taking care of the credit check now and establishing yourself as a client with high creditworthiness will go a long way toward making your next job with us even simpler.
That said, if you feel your credit history is too short or that you need to boost your credit before it can act as a positive reflection on your business, we can certainly hold off for now or rerun the numbers in the future. If you think your creditworthiness may have increased, feel free to reach out and request a new check.
4. Offering Perks for Creditworthy Customers
Because it’s an industry standard and we know how much it can help out, we try to extend 30-day terms to as many of our customers as we can. Since we’re careful about who we actually trust based on credit checks and trade references, many customers like yourself get to enjoy perks and incentives such as:
- Discounts: For approved customers only, paying your invoice within 10 days will mean a 1% discount on your job.
- Creative problem-solving: Sometimes well-established businesses fall on hard times, and we’ll do everything we can to work around those situations and help our trusted customers get the printwork they need. While we can’t always guarantee a solution, we’re able to be flexible about payment terms from time to time, especially compared to smaller printers working with their equipment in-house.
- Smaller jobs: We’re not the right fit for some companies with small orders, such as the need for 100 business cards. That said, sometimes big clients with lots of print needs just happen to have a small need. In these cases, when a customer has a good rapport with Integra, we’ll often allow payment on delivery only.
4 FAQs About Integra’s Business Credit Check
Some questions we commonly get about the credit checks we run before extending terms include:
- Can Integra turn you down based on your credit? Integra maintains the right to choose our customers and their payment terms. We work to be both transparent and flexible so that you know exactly what you can expect, but we also choose how to proceed on a case-by-case basis. For information about your exact credit and terms, reach out to an Integra expert.
- Will my business’s credit take a hit from being checked? Business credit operates a little differently than personal consumer credit, and in some ways, it’s even more nuanced. Certain scores factor in new credit inquiries, while others focus solely on repayments and whether they’ve happened on time. That said, you shouldn’t notice more than a few points worth of fluctuation, and that’s if you see any change at all.
- Do I have to do anything extra or pay any fees for the credit check? Absolutely not. The expense is entirely on the part of Integra Graphics Synergy, and once you fill out your credit check application, the rest will happen on our end.
- Can I get my credit results from Integra? Certainly! Just let us know you’d like to see the results, and we’ll get them to you privately and securely.
Should You Move Forward With Requesting and Signing a Quote With Integra Graphics Synergy?
If you’re running a new business or haven’t worked with a print broker before, you may have been a bit surprised by the credit check request. Hopefully now you have a better understanding of why we run credit checks on the companies we serve, and what you can expect from the process, no matter what your credit looks like.
So what’s next? If you’ve filled out your credit check already and you’re waiting to hear back, you’re ahead of the game! You’ll want to submit trade references as well, and once we hear back from them, we’ll work on getting back to you as quickly as possible (usually about a week if trade references reach out in a timely manner).
Your next step, if you’re happy with the terms we extend, might be to sign a quote and get your print project moving. Find out what to expect once you’ve signed your print pricing quote.
If you have any questions along the way or want to check on the status of your credit check and offer, reach out to your contact at Integra.
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