Help a Fellow Patron Out? - Electronic Invoice Tracking Options (Patreon)

Got an email from Patron Zach who's looking for some help/recommendations on convincing his boss to switch over from paper invoices to help speed things up. Here's Zach's description. If you have a thought for him just comment on this post and he'll see them.

Thanks boss(es)! 

"So this company I work for is a family owned company. We are a small snack foods distributor. We go to places like convenience stores and sell things like beef jerky, pretzels, and nuts. 

I'm one of the salesmen in the company. My goes like this: I travel to my assigned route and pull up to the first stop. I figure out what the store needs for products, go back to my truck. 

Here is where I pull product for the store and fill out a paper invoice with carbon copies. Each stop can take about 5-10 minutes to put the invoice together with the product. 

At the end of the day a total of over an hour can be spent filling out paper invoices. At the end of the week, I have to scan all of my invoices and put a PDF of them on our cloud service (Google drive). 

We also have to enter the totals with the account name into a spreadsheet, and track our company card expenses on a separate spreadsheet. This typically takes about an hour at the end of the week. 

This method works, but it takes time out of the sales staff's day to fill out the paper invoices that could otherwise be spent trying to start new accounts. 

The owners' stance at this point is they don't want to hear "we want electronic invoices, we want a solution with costs. Then we'll consider it." I'm kind of at a loss for what to pitch. I've thought maybe tablets with invoicing software and a portable printer, but I don't know enough about what software is available to give a proper solution to my bosses. If you've got any ideas, I am all ears. 

About the company,

It's a company of 7 people. 

1. The owner. She handles payroll and other administration details such as billing. 

2. VP of sales. (Owners husband) meets with buyers and sells to chains of stores. Also approves pricing overrides the salesmen suggest. 

3. Data entry. She opens our PDF of our scanned invoices and enters them into quick books and checks for accuracy. 

4. General manager. He is the supervisor of the sales team. He also meets with buyers. Manages main warehouse.  He also orders inventory, and delivers product to each salesman's satellite warehouse. 

5, 6, and 7. Salesmen. We travel all over Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, north and South Dakota and we sell as much as we can. (Personally, I drive approximately 1,000 miles every week.)

Again, I'm not sure if this would would work for a discussion for the show, but at this point I'm at a loss with what to present to the bosses to convince them to join the 21st century with their business. Any questions or clearing up needed ask away!

Tom, I cannot thank you and everyone else at your show for occupying my drive times. You've personally saved my sanity. Thank you again for your time on this muggy day in Fargo, ND. 

Zach from humid enough to cut through the air with a knife Minnesota."