The true cost of paper invoicing on a DSD route

If a rep writes an order on paper, someone keys it again later. That second touch is where margin quietly leaks — in time, in errors, and in cash that arrives late.

Add up the second touch

A rep who spends 30–40 minutes a night re-keying tickets isn't unusual. Multiply that across a fleet and a five-day week and you're paying for hundreds of hours a month to type information that already existed.

Then add the error tax: a transposed price, a missed case, a credit that never posts. Each one is a call, a re-bill, or a write-off.

Where paper costs you most

• Labor: nightly re-keying and morning reconciliation.
• Errors: wrong prices and quantities that erode margin and trust.
• Cash: invoices that post days late stretch your DSO.
• Disputes: no signature or timestamp means you eat the credit.

What changes at the door

When the rep captures the order once — priced correctly, signed, and queued to post — the second touch disappears. Invoices hit your accounting system the same day, and the nightly typing session is gone.

The math is simple: fewer hours, fewer errors, faster cash.