Accounts Payable Automation for a Metals Distributor

The Client

A multi-division metals distributor and existing Trailmix client. When their finance team needed help with payables, they came back to us.

The Challenge

Every supplier bill had to reach the right approver, get coded to the right division and be keyed into the ERP by hand. Approver assignments lived in several conflicting spreadsheets covering hundreds of vendors. A lean finance team spent its days chasing sign-offs and correcting bills booked to the wrong office, and payment backup still meant a rubber stamp.

The Solution

We built an accounts payable module that connects directly to their ERP.

• AI reads every invoice: Finance uploads a PDF and the key details are pulled out automatically. Anything unclear is left blank for a person to fill in, never guessed.
• The right approver, every time: One routing table replaced the spreadsheets. Coding is pre-filled from each vendor’s history at that office, and possible duplicates are flagged.
• Approvals from the inbox: Approvers get one daily digest and can sign off in bulk, with each approval stamped right on the PDF.
• Payments that fill themselves in: Approved bills post to the ERP automatically, with vendor, amount and coding already populated. When it’s time to pay, the system builds the backup on its own: a payment register plus every approved, stamped invoice in a single PDF.

Timeline: Working demo in nine days, a single-office pilot two days later, and live company-wide in about five weeks. Finance asked to go live early, and we kept shipping improvements alongside them.

The Impact

• Live at every office about five weeks after kickoff
• Invoices under $5K post to the ERP with no manual entry
• No more photocopying every invoice for payment batches. Backup generates automatically.
• Fewer entry errors, since nothing is re-keyed between the invoice and the ERP
• No more wrong-division bills from copied coding

“It’s definitely a time saver when it comes to pulling payment batches, and sending bills straight to our ERP is like magic. It’s just a million times better.”

— Senior Staff Accountant

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