SafetyWallet uses Zoho Flow to automate order processing and save over $20,000 a year

About the company

SafetyWallet is a South African health and safety company. It sells products, services, and subscriptions through two custom-built websites: a subscriber platform for existing clients, and a public shop called My Safety Shop, where anyone can request a quote. The company is South African but sells to anyone, and its live chat regularly shows enquiries from China, Vietnam, America, and Spain.

Automating orders, quotes, and subscriptions from the website

A two-person procurement team handles the volume, which comes to more than 100 new orders monthly on top of recurring subscriptions.

Previously, every website request was interpreted by a person. Prospects browsed the site and reach out by phone or email, and from there, a team member worked out everything manually: confirming the products, determining whether it was a quote or an order, tracking down which website it came from, and checking whether the customer already existed. Then, they would create or update the customer record, generate the quote or order, log the CRM deal, open a support ticket, and notify the right colleague. That ran 10 to 20 minutes per request, and the team could only help one customer at a time.

Working with their implementation partner DSL Telecom, John Terblanche, Executive Director at SafetyWallet, built the flow they call "New Orders, Quotations, and Subscriptions."

A request from either website sends a payload to a webhook in Zoho Flow, carrying the customer, their reference, and what they have asked for. The flow reads it to work out whether this is a quote, an order, or a subscription, and which site it came from. It then searches Zoho Books for that customer to get their ID. If they don't already exist, the flow creates them, marks whoever made the request as the primary contact, and fetches the record so the next steps have something to work with.

For an order, the flow creates the invoice, then creates a deal in Zoho CRM so sales can track it, and links the invoice to that deal. A custom function then raises the purchase order for the procurement team, marks the invoice as sent, and creates a procurement ticket in Zoho Desk, with a Zoho Cliq message letting the team know there are items to procure.

For a subscription, the flow fetches the account linked to that customer in Zoho CRM, creating the account and deal if they don't exist yet. Setting the CRM deal type to subscription triggers a second flow, which fetches the account and contact, looks the customer up in Zoho Billing, creates them if needed, and creates the subscription. The customer gets an email confirming it, and the subscription is linked back to the deal that started it.

The team doesn't run Zoho Desk as a conventional help desk. They've turned it into an internal task board, so whenever something happens in the system, a task lands with the person who needs to act on it. John calls it exactly that, a task board, and it's why everyone from procurement to support to operations knows where a job stands.

"Professionalism linked to efficiency. That is what automating our orders, quotes, and subscriptions from the website has given us."

John Terblanche, Executive Director, SafetyWallet

Managing vendor job cards through to payment

When SafetyWallet sends a purchase order to a vendor, the work that came back used to be reconciled by hand at month end. Someone checked what had been done and what hadn't before creditors could pay anyone.

Now every purchase order leaving Zoho Books carries a link to a public Zoho Creator page. The vendor completes the job, fills in a job card built in Zoho Forms, and attaches it to the purchase order inside Creator. Submitting that public form creates a Creator record pre-filled with the purchase order number and other details, and that record triggers the flow.

The flow fetches the matching purchase order from Zoho Books using that number and looks up the vendor. It works out who the debtor and creditor are on the Books side, then creates a task in Zoho Desk and messages the right person to check that the job card details and attachments are correct. Custom functions in Zoho CRM create a matching record for every job card, so the same job exists in both systems. Once the vendor completes their side, the flow runs again to confirm everything's been done properly.

Month-end payment now runs off records that are already verified. Nobody sits down to balance what was done against what was invoiced.

Automating customer invoice follow-up on two payment terms

SafetyWallet runs two payment arrangements. Customers who are not subscribers pay on receipt. Subscribers are on 30-day accounts. Following up on either used to depend on someone noticing and deciding to chase, which meant some invoices were chased twice and others not at all.

Two scheduled processes handle it now. A schedule in Zoho Books collects the invoices due on receipt and sends them to Zoho Flow, which checks the status of each invoice. Anything unpaid raises a task in Zoho Desk for two specific people dealing with invoices and accounts, plus a Zoho Cliq message. A second schedule does the same for the 30-day invoices, skipping anything already settled and messaging the person responsible to collect on whatever's overdue. A custom function trims the payload and loops through it until there's nothing left to check, so one run handles the whole batch.

Automating the wider business

SafetyWallet automates around 25 workflows in Zoho Flow across sales, marketing, billing, support, operations, and company culture. Some add leads to the right lists in Zoho Marketing Automation, so prospects get messaging matched to where they came from and what they were interested in. Others turn key actions into Zoho Desk tickets, so nothing slips and everyone can see who owns what. And a Zoho Forms to Zoho Connect flow runs the internal Culture Club, where the team recognizes each other's work.

Benefits and ROI

Zoho Flow has changed how much a two-person procurement team can carry. Each website request used to need 10 to 20 minutes of hands-on work. Now it needs none, and 100+ orders a month move through the system alongside the subscription work without anyone interpreting or re-keying anything.

"We can double our sales on monthly basis without needing to employ any additional person. Everybody's integrated and knows exactly who's where in the process. The communication between departments is much better."

John Terblanche,Executive Director, SafetyWallet

The saving John puts first is the hire role he never had to make. Instead of bringing someone on just to take care of repeated manual tasks, the team could focus on more important work. This saves the company over US$20,000 a year. It's also let them restructure the creditors team, where one person can efficiently handle the whole load.

There's a less measurable change both John and the partner keep coming back to. With the data silos gone, the business runs as one operation.

Moving forward

SafetyWallet is building a two-way link between Zoho CRM and the custom health and safety software that runs its operations. A unique ID on each platform will match the accounts, and Zoho Flow will sync notes in both directions, so a note added to a customer in one system shows up in the other.