Finding Hidden Back-Office Friction Before Heating Season
As summer winds down, propane marketers begin preparing for what everyone knows is coming. Trucks are serviced, tanks are filled, seasonal employees are hired, and delivery schedules are reviewed. Every department is looking for ways to be ready before the first cold snap.
One area, however, often gets overlooked.
Recently, I was talking with an office manager at a propane company and asked a simple question:
“If you could eliminate one task from your day, what would it be?”
I expected to hear something about month-end closing, customer collections, or balancing the books.
Instead, she laughed and said, “I’d love to stop opening four different payment reports every morning.”
It wasn’t a major problem. It wasn’t even the biggest frustration in her day. It was simply one of those small tasks that had quietly become part of the routine.
That conversation stuck with me because I’ve heard versions of it countless times over the years. The biggest operational inefficiencies usually aren’t dramatic. They’re the five- and ten-minute tasks that nobody questions because they’ve “always been done that way.”
Individually, those tasks don’t seem important. Collectively, they consume hours every month and create unnecessary friction for already busy teams.
As staffing continues to be a challenge across the propane industry, now is a great time to take a fresh look at the small routines that may be costing your business more time than you realize.
Reconciling Information from Multiple Sources
Many offices still receive payment information from several different places. Credit cards may settle through one system, ACH payments through another, online payments through a customer portal, and bank deposits through yet another report.
None of those reports are particularly difficult to review. The challenge is that someone has to compare them all before the day can move forward.
Ten minutes each morning may not sound like much, but over the course of a year it adds up to more than a full workweek.
The question isn’t whether your team is capable of doing it. The question is whether they still should.
Following Up on Expired Payment Methods
Recurring payments have become a convenience that customers appreciate and propane marketers rely on.
Unfortunately, payment credentials don’t last forever. Cards expire, are replaced after fraud events, or are reissued by banks. When that happens, someone in the office often has to call the customer, update the information, and retry the payment.
Again, it’s only a few minutes at a time.
But if those interruptions happen several times each day, they quietly consume dozens of hours over the course of a year while interrupting more valuable work.
Hunting for Answers Instead of Finding Them
Owners and managers ask good questions.
- Which branch has the highest payment costs?
- Are more customers paying by ACH than they were last year?
- Which payment channels are growing?
- How much did we process yesterday?
Those answers shouldn’t require exporting spreadsheets, combining reports, or manually sorting data.
Modern reporting tools should help managers spend less time gathering information and more time using it to make better decisions.
Waiting Too Long to Find Problems
Whether it’s a returned ACH payment, a failed recurring transaction, or an exception that requires attention, the longer it takes to identify an issue, the more work it often creates.
Small problems are usually easiest to solve when they’re discovered quickly.
Timely notifications and clear reporting don’t just improve collections—they reduce the amount of follow-up work required from your staff.
Accepting “That’s How We’ve Always Done It”
This may be the biggest friction point of all.
Every office develops routines over time. Many were created years ago for good reasons.
Technology changes.
Customer expectations change.
Workflows change.
Yet some processes remain exactly the same simply because no one has stopped to ask whether there’s a better way.
Summer and early fall provide a valuable opportunity to do exactly that.
Walk through your office. Watch how payments move from the customer to the accounting department. Ask your team which tasks they find repetitive, frustrating, or unnecessarily manual.
You may be surprised by what you learn.
Before Heating Season Arrives
Every propane marketer is looking for an advantage before winter.
Sometimes that advantage comes from better routing, improved forecasting, or stronger customer communication.
Sometimes it comes from something much simpler.
Removing one five-minute task from someone’s daily routine may not seem like a significant improvement. But when those five-minute tasks happen every day, across multiple employees, they add up to something much larger.
Preparing for winter isn’t only about making sure your trucks are ready.
It’s also about making sure your people are spending their time on work that truly adds value.
The best operational improvements aren’t always the biggest projects. More often, they’re the small changes that quietly remove friction from the work your team does every day.
As you prepare for another busy heating season, ask one simple question:
What are the five-minute tasks we’ve accepted as normal—and what would happen if they simply disappeared?
Jon Gilbert
Vice President, Channel Business Development
Jon@qualpay.com
207-321-1150