Overview
Paytronix, an Access Group company, is a cloud-based digital guest engagement platform for the hospitality industry that provides loyalty programs, online ordering, gift cards, branded mobile applications, and strategic insights to 1,800+ restaurant and convenience store brands across 50,000 sites globally.
Key Accounts Payable (AP) challenges
- Highly manual AP processes creating hours of tedious busywork
- A high volume of check payments and rising costs to print and process them
- Slow payment approval processes leading to late payments, unnecessary fees and growing vendor frustration
- A lack of transparency about invoice approvals, payment status and cash flow
- No integration with NetSuite ERP system, requiring additional manual inputs and duplicate work for the finance team
The Solution for Improving the AP Process
- Five-week implementation with easy onboarding supplemented by MineralTree Academy self-paced training
- Custom workflows with multi-level approval settings for different employees and vendors
- 2-way sync between NetSuite and MineralTree for automatic PO matching
- Digital payment options including SilverPay virtual card with high-value cash rebates
- Conversion of a large portion of vendors to digital payment options with help from MineralTree payment services
- Comprehensive MineralTree support including Live Chat function
The Results of AP Automation
- SilverPay virtual card payments offset the costs of MineralTree AP software
- Automated workflows eliminate at least four hours of manual work every week
- Streamlined AP process delivers invoices and approvals digitally via pre-set rules
- Easy payment scheduling means significantly fewer late payments
- Streamlined vendor payment communications build trust and confidence
- Connection to a wider range of financial controls translate to better cash management and business forecasting
Customer Background
In 2020, Paytronix had ~200 employees working at their main office in Newton, Massachusetts, including their finance and AP teams. At that time, like many AP teams, their processes were highly manual. The manual nature of the work is a story many AP professionals can still relate to today: invoices arrived by mail and email, were printed and added into folders, then physically walked to department heads’ desks where they’d sit for days or even weeks, waiting for approval. After a long, slow approval process, AP teams would manually print checks, stuff envelopes, and cross their fingers that payments would arrive on time. The effects of the manual process were late fees, vendor frustration, and hours of tedious busywork that AP teams could have spent better elsewhere.
When COVID hit and remote work was the sudden new norm, Paytronix could no longer operate with the manual processes that were in place. In late 2020, Paytronix began working with MineralTree, and in the years since, they’ve done more than just automate AP processes—they’ve turned their department from a cost center into a revenue generator while saving their team at least hours of manual work every week.
Q&A
MineralTree recently sat down with Christopher Brock-Fisher, Staff Accountant at Paytronix, to learn about his experience with AP automation. Christopher shared his thoughts on maximizing your investment in AP automation and we’re excited to bring you his insights and advice. Read on to see what he has to say.
Q. What was it like before MineralTree, and what efficiency gains have you seen since automating AP?
A. Christopher: Before we moved to MineralTree, our AP processes were very manual. We’d get invoices in the mail or via email, which we’d then print it out. We’d put the invoices assigned to each department in a folder and walk the folder over to the department head’s desk. Then, once a week– but sometimes maybe just once a month–the department head would look at the folder, sign off on the invoices, and hand the folder back. Then, I’d print out checks, stuff envelopes, attach remittance advice, and send those out. It was manual and time-intensive and it led to too many late payments.
When COVID happened, that process definitely didn’t work anymore. We were missing invoices in the mail, we weren’t getting approvals via email, so we knew we had to automate AP for our own efficiency, so we looked at a few different companies, and MineralTree was our favorite.
MineralTree has saved us an immense amount of time–at least four hours every week just in terms of a check run.
We no longer have to print out invoices or checks, we don’t have to physically find the signer or wait on them to look through each check or ask questions. Now, all the details are delivered digitally via pre-set approval rules and with the required information.
We’ve also seen a lot less late payments because it’s easy to go in and schedule a payment. Once we have the full approval for an invoice, we can schedule the payment for a time in the future to make sure it gets to the vendor before the due date. That’s been amazing.
MineralTree has also been a revenue generator for us. The cashback we receive from using SilverPay virtual card payments has been enough to entirely offset the costs of MineralTree a few of the years we’ve worked together, which is amazing. Most companies look at AP entirely as a cost center, not a revenue driver. Being able to bring on a tool like MineralTree that offers such a rise in efficiency while also not adding much or any cost to the P&L was a huge win for us.
At this point, MineralTree is a really beloved tool. Even managers outside of finance really appreciate it. They come to me and say how great MineralTree is for us. They love that it just sends them an email, where they can click a button and it’s done. So it’s been wonderful.
Q. Has AP automation helped you work better with your vendors?
A. Christopher: It’s been great to just go into MineralTree and look at the remittance, which shows the dates a payment was initiated on, approved on, and when it should arrive to the vendor. Being able to give that information to the vendor and say, “Here are the specifics, it’s coming to you,” is better for them than just hearing, “I promise the check is in the mail.” It helps build trust and confidence, which is so important.
Q. Why did you select MineralTree over the other providers you looked at?
A. Christopher: There were two big factors in selecting MineralTree. The first was the virtual card rebate, and the second was the ability to set up custom approval rules. We wanted multi-level approval abilities because our C-Suite wants to have their finger on the pulse of our cash and understand what’s happening.
MineralTree offered the best matrix for approvals and a rebate that was better than the other providers, so that really drove the choice.
Q. How do MineralTree and NetSuite work together?
A. Christopher: The integration is great and I really appreciate the 2-way sync between NetSuite and MineralTree, because it makes my life really easy. For the majority of our documents, having the 2-way sync means we can upload a document directly to MineralTree, which can automatically match to the PO in NetSuite. Some of our more nuanced documents are handled directly in NetSuite, and then I let them flow to MineralTree to manage the rest of the process.The Solution for a More Streamlined AP Process.
Q. What was the initial onboarding and implementation process like?
A. Christopher: Sera was my sales rep, and after we signed, she still stayed close while we were getting up and running. After we went live, she stayed in touch to make sure we were happy with the tool and using it successfully.
Implementation only took about five weeks, so we were live fairly quickly after signing. MineralTree is pretty intuitive to learn, so we didn’t feel like the implementation was too much of a lift. The implementation team was really hands-on during the onboarding process, and I also found MineralTree Academy particularly helpful. Since it’s self-paced training, it was great to be able to do those classes on my own. After implementation and MineralTree Academy, I felt I really understood how MineralTree would work for us.
We have a very detailed approvals process, and the biggest hurdle for our implementation was setting up our unique approval rules. We needed to build out multiple approval processes based on a variety of factors, the biggest of which was to map different vendors to different departments. We also needed to set rules for internal approvers based on dollar amounts.
Because of some of our nuanced approval rules, the MineralTree implementation team worked with us to download a list of our vendors, fill in the right rules for each vendor, and then they uploaded the rules into the platform. This process still flows smoothly to this day. If we have internal role changes or vendor updates, I reach out to MineralTree Support, we put together an upload file to update the approvals for a given vendor, and then they take care of the changes.
Q. How has Support helped you?
A. Christopher: I have nothing but good things to say about the support team and I love the Live Chat function in the platform—that’s one of the most valuable pieces of the platform.
It’s so useful to just go in and talk to a person. It’s becoming incredibly rare nowadays where you actually get to connect with a real person. They’re also incredibly quick. I never wait more than a few minutes for someone to connect to me, and most of the time, they quickly solve my issue too. I usually have an answer within an hour. If it’s something they can’t solve quickly, they’re always upfront about it and inform me on the steps they’re taking to get me an answer. I’ve been very happy with the level of support we get.
Q. MineralTree offers several different payment methods (virtual cards, ACH, and checks). What’s your philosophy on picking the right payment method?
A. Christopher: When we first launched with MineralTree, we made a lot of check payments. As check processing costs rose, we made a big push to move our vendors to ACH or virtual card payments. Plus, for efficiency, we didn’t want to really support manual checks anymore.
During that push to electronic payments, we converted a large portion of our vendors to ACH payments, which saves us money and time. Certainly, electronic payments are a lot better than all that mail just flowing around the system, and we reduce the amount of checks that get lost, and avoid checks being returned to us. It really is wonderful to see that happen.
I think virtual cards are a great way to handle payments, and we stay at maximum saturation with vendors who accept virtual card payments. On a quarterly basis, MineralTree’s payment optimization team will reach out to discuss new vendors we’ve onboarded and see if they can find additional vendors to get onto the SilverPay program. The virtual card option is great because, besides earning us cashback, virtual cards reduce the risk involved in the payments by providing a one-time use card with a maximum amount as opposed to having to provide ACH details. It’s safer for everyone involved.
Q. If you could pick the best feature in MineralTree, is there anything that jumps out?
A. Christopher: I think it would have to be a tie! Like I mentioned, the Live Chat support is one of my favorite features. I also love how easy the UI makes it to queue up payments. As you put payments into the queue, the steps are really clear. You’re able to review the payments a final time, choose the payment method and when the payment should go out, select the bank account it should go out from–and all from one page. Before, if I wanted to make an ACH batch, I had to go into NetSuite and it would generate an ACH file, then I’d have to go to the bank, upload the file, and we’ve got two banks I want payments to come out, so I’d have to do that process twice. Now, I can do it all in one spot with MineralTree and it’s so much easier.
Q. Any advice you’d share with someone considering MineralTree?
A. Christopher: I really appreciate everything MineralTree does for us. A lot of people seem to think, “Do we really need to automate AP? Everything’s working fine.”
What they don’t understand is that AP automation ties into a much wider range of financial controls than just making sure vendors get paid on time.
It’s also about cash management and for small businesses, it’s hard to manage your cash. Having a system like MineralTree, where you can quickly see what’s in open AP, the timing of payments that are going out, and what your cash balance is at any moment is really powerful, not just for accounts payable departments, but also for finance departments who are trying to forecast where you’re going to be in a quarter or two from now.
Of all the vendors we use, MineralTree is one of my favorites, because it keeps me sane and makes it so we can handle the volume of payments we have.
About MineralTree, a Global Payments Company
MineralTree, a Global Payments (NYSE: GPN) company, provides modern, secure, easy-to-use accounts payable (AP) and payment automation solutions. By uniting technology and passionate people, we make the process of business payments easy, impactful, and profitable. Our solutions combine ease of use with robust capabilities that drive meaningful insights, transforming the back office into a strategic partner of the corner office.
