Trade Reference Replies for ECI Spruce
A reference request on one of your customers is read as it arrives, by fax, email or form. Lunica pulls the account’s history from Spruce, sold since, high credit, terms, average days to pay, the last twelve months, drafts the reply in your policy’s wording, and your credit manager sends it.
CreditUpdated Oct 202620 ERPs
See it work on Spruce.
Click through the steps. Fictional data, in Spruce’s terms; the real thing runs on Spruce.
Trade reference request: Northline Drywall, 220 Mill Rd. Please provide sold since, high credit, current balance, terms and manner of payment. Account opening in process; reply by fax or email appreciated.
Read from the fax: who asks, which customer, what they want.
The problem, as it happens in Spruce.
A reference request comes in from another yard’s credit desk, on their form, by fax or as a PDF in the AR inbox. Somebody opens the customer account in Spruce, runs the Aged Receivables report for the account, scrolls back through the sales history for the high credit, guesses at average days to pay, and types the answer onto the form by hand. Twenty minutes, if nobody is at the counter.
What gets said varies by who answered. One clerk gives the limit and the balance, the next says “satisfactory”, a third mentions the hold from last spring. Nobody tracks what was said about whom, and the request that sat in the fax tray for a week cost the customer a supplier.
How it works.
- 1
The request is read as it arrives
Fax, email, PDF or the other supplier’s web form. Lunica reads the customer named, who is asking and what they ask for, and matches it to the customer account in Spruce, with the match shown for a person to confirm.
- 2
The account history is pulled
Sold since, high credit, current balance and terms, average days to pay, the last twelve months’ purchases, past-due history. Every figure is read from Spruce for this reply, never typed or remembered.
- 3
The reply is drafted in your words
Your policy decides what a reference may say: ranges instead of figures, no limit, pay history as a band. The draft follows it, on the requester’s form or in a letter, and a rule refuses any line the policy doesn’t allow.
- 4
Your credit manager sends it
Edit, send or decline. Every reply is filed against the account with who asked, what was said and when, so the next request is answered the same way.
How it connects to Spruce.
Lunica reads the customer account, invoice and payment history and the terms per account through a read-only login to the Spruce SQL Server database, for the account the request names: first sale, high credit, balance, days beyond Net 30 EOM, twelve months of purchases. It reads the rows for that account only, when a request comes in.
Nothing is written to Spruce by Lunica and nothing is sent on its own. Every reply is a draft until a person sends it. The request and the reply are filed against the account on the Lunica server, on one Windows server inside your network, or beside ECI’s hosted Spruce. If you note the reference on the customer account, that is keyed by your team.
What a week looks like.
- Every reference request answered the same day, in your policy’s words.
- Figures come from Spruce, read for the reply, not from memory.
- What was said about each customer, and to whom, is on file.
- The request that used to sit in the fax tray is in the queue by morning.
Questions
Does Lunica send the reply?
No. It drafts it. Your credit manager reads it, edits it if needed, and sends it, or declines the request.
What does the reply say?
What your policy allows. Many dealers give high credit as a range, pay history as a band, and never the limit or the balance. The policy is a spec your admins edit, with history and revert.
What if we don’t have the customer?
It says so, and drafts a short reply that the account isn’t found, for a person to send. Nothing about anyone is guessed.
Does it read Spruce for every request?
Yes, for the one account the request names, at the time of the request, through a read-only login to the Spruce SQL Server database. Nothing is stored in bulk.
What about requests on the other supplier’s form?
The form is read and the answers are drafted onto it, or into a letter if the form can’t be filled. Fax, PDF, photo or web form.
Does it write anything to Spruce?
No. The request and the reply are filed against the account on the Lunica server. The customer account in Spruce stays as your team keeps it.
Does it need a server?
Lunica runs on one Windows server inside your network, or beside ECI’s hosted Spruce, set up and maintained by Lunica. It reads ECI Spruce through a read-only login to the Spruce SQL Server database. There is no inbound connection from outside your network.
What does Lunica read in Spruce?
The customer account, open items and terms, purchase orders and receipts, the item record, quotes and order history, as each workflow needs them. Read-only, and only the rows a task is about.
Can it post to Spruce?
Nothing lands in Spruce without a person. What belongs in Spruce goes back as a Spruce import where one exists, or keyed by your team from what Lunica prepared.
What about our documents?
Invoice copies and scans keep living in Spruce document imaging. Lunica reads them when a workflow needs one and never writes to them.
The same workflow, on another ERP.
Trade Reference Replies is written for every system on the list. You’re reading the Spruce version.
See it on your Spruce data.
Thirty minutes. We walk the workflow on Spruce data, then map it to yours.