How Does A Buying Group Work?

Buying Groups (or Cooperatives) are set up to acquire the maximum volume purchasing power available from a particular vendor or supplier. Combining the dollar volume and the quantity volume qualifies our buying group for the best discounts on your eyewear and eyecare products. The monthly billing cycle is simple.


  1. Through the buying group, an account is established for your office with the suppliers you choose. Some suppliers allow the buying group to open an account for you, and others require that the request come from your office and then authorized by the buying group. Heartland will advise you which suppliers you must notify.

  2. Once the account is set up for your office, you need only to contact them to place orders. The product is shipped directly from the supplier to your office.

  3. The buying group will receive a copy of your invoice, a computer diskette, a printout, or e-mail from the supplier to use for entry of your purchases for the month.

  4. At the end of the month, the supplier cuts off billing for that month and creates their statements, which they send to the buying group for payment.

  5. After getting all the months' invoices and statements from the suppliers, the buying group enters all the information into the computer and then reconciles all that was entered to the statements sent by the supplier, to ensure all is correct.

  6. Around the 8th of the next month, the buying group then generates a statement for your office. The is statement is cumulative of all the invoices for each supplier you used. Each supplier will have a total for all the invoices generated that month. Your statement will also have a summary page of all the activity for the month. All credits are applied to the whole statement and used against other charges for that month. Your group fee is calculated and added at this time also.

  7. Payments from you to the buying group are due upon receipt of the statement. Discounts will be lost if the payment is not to the buying group office by the 18th of the same month. This gives you 10 days to send it in. If any corrections need to be done, a quick call to the buying group office will get it done over the phone, then adjusting entries will be made the following month.

  8. The buying group pays the suppliers by their due dates.