The Controller who swapped manual tasks for automation
An unconventional approach to staffing: replace people with automation, not more people
Colin Madden, controller at The Pines at Davidson, doesn’t mince words. His team ditched paper cover sheets, killed a full-time AP position, and jumped “from 1980s accounting to 2020s” almost overnight. Department heads got three hours of their day back. The finance director no longer signs stacks of checks. Implementation took less than two weeks.
INTERNAL/EXTERNAL DISCUSSIONS
Using messages to keep everything connected
“We use the messaging capability quite a lot. In finance and AP, we use it to ask questions about coding, especially around things like capital expenditures, whether it really qualifies as capital. I’ve seen approvers reject invoices back to their coders with messages asking when was this service complete or are we sure this is the right amount.”
“We’ve even had communication with vendors. I’ve had messages from vendors asking if the invoice has all the information we need from them. That happened before we even set up our vendor portal. It’s nice to have all that communication in one place. We just got through our 2024 audit and were able to provide our auditors with invoice printouts that have that communication, showing we’re actually using our internal controls for approvals and review of invoices. That was very helpful.”
EFFICIENCY
Ditching the cover sheets
“In our old system, every department would print out a cover sheet for every single invoice with the GL coding classification and a spot for approval. With every invoice, they were printing a new piece of paper, writing in the information, then sending it to their department leader for approval. Stampli completely took out that step. You can imagine how much paper that’s saving, how much time that’s saving. It’s been like night and day.”
“We completely eliminated a full-time AP role. We’ve reduced an FTE because of the Stampli implementation. Our large departments have reported savings of up to three hours a day, which is amazing now that they’re able to focus on their actual job function rather than just the administration of AP. I wish I would have done a time study before implementing to see how much time everyone was spending.”
“Billy has helped our efficiency. Billy’s suggestions, especially the more that we’ve used the system, are almost always right. It saves time without having to search for the GL accounts or the other different codings that we use. To see what we’ve used in the past and see the suggestions and just click them – that’s been a great time saving.”
PERSONA-CENTRIC DESIGN
Going from training to live in one hour
“When we first started, I was told we could implement within two weeks and I thought that was impossible. But we did the back end work really quickly. Our first training session was an hour. Everyone trained in one hour and was ready to rock and roll the next day we went live. The user interface is so easy to use. No one had any issues picking it up right off the bat. I think the approver training session was 30 minutes.”
“And right afterwards, people were ready to get in the system. The fact that we signed our agreement and were processing invoices in less than two weeks shocked everybody on the team. I’ve never gone through an implementation that fast with anything. Even though Stampli didn’t really change people’s functions, it took out all this manual process, saving everybody time, making it more efficient, and helping us be more accurate.”
ERP INTEGRATION
From 1980s to 2020s accounting
“Because we’re really smart, we were going through an ERP implementation during the same time period as our Stampli implementation. Our legacy system wasn’t very user friendly, not great reporting capabilities. Even though we had to do a manual upload and download between systems to update invoice payments, because all our invoicing was in Stampli, we dramatically improved our expense management capabilities right off the bat.”
“Since we’ve gone live with NetSuite with the direct API integration, the ability to jump from an income statement in our ERP, drill down to the expense line, and click the link to go right to Stampli to see the actual source document is like we’re in the future, honestly. We went from 1980s accounting to 2020s. And then from Stampli, we can go directly to our ERP system to get vendor details. It’s night and day here at the Pines for sure.”
Beyond AP: How Stampli adapts to solve more than just Invoice Processing
Getting invoices from everywhere
Adaptability
“What was unique that I thought might be difficult is we got invoices from multiple different sources. Invoices would be mailed directly to the Pines, either to our accounting department or other departments on site. Invoices were emailed either directly to our AP inbox, to several departments with their own accounts payable inboxes, or just to individual employees. I was worried about all these different avenues for invoices coming into the site and whether we’d be able to get those into Stampli efficiently. We’ve developed so many efficiencies now. We have scanners throughout our campus with quick codes to different inbox sources so they go directly into Stampli into the right person’s queue. We’ve set up email rules so attachments coming into payable inboxes automatically forward into Stampli into the right person’s queue. Those efficiencies have saved a lot of time.”
“We had some internally created invoices. Things where we didn’t necessarily get an invoice directly from a vendor, but we had the expectation to make routine monthly payments based on some internal numbers. In Stampli, we were able to set up recurring invoices for those so we could attach both the agreement and the calculation document every month. They’re automatically populated now. We route them to the appropriate people for approval and it really simplified that process.”
Approval bottlenecks eliminated
“The bottlenecks that existed beforehand were generally with the approval system. It was all manual. We have three major departments that have most of our invoicing. We used to have a full-time AP person who would do the data entry, but they would get those invoices all on Thursday or Friday because departments would give them to their approver just at the very end of the week so they could go through the whole stack at one time. We’ve completely eliminated that bottleneck. Invoices are put into the system as we receive them. Approvers are approving invoices daily because it’s so much faster.”
Better cash flow management
“We’ve always paid pretty quickly, so we haven’t really been able to get any discounts or early pay. But it has helped with cash flows because now we’re able to more manage the payment process from the AP level with more information available. We see due dates much easier now. We can choose which invoices we’d like to pay, when we’d like to pay them. Those are the key time and money savings we’ve found from Stampli.”
No more stacks of paper checks
“We used to put a stack of checks on the director of finance’s desk once a week, and he’d have to go through and sign every check. Prior to Stampli, he’d also have a giant stack of all the invoices with the approvals so that he could go through and do reviews. When we went to Stampli, he still got the stack of checks, but then he could just go right into the system to see all the approvals and any invoice detail. Now with direct pay, he just goes into the system and we’ve assigned thresholds. I approve certain levels, then it goes to him, then to our CEO. In direct pay, you can see every invoice, how it went through the system, who coded it, who approved it.”