Beginning in 2013, Illinois-based Providence Management Company started using AvidPay from AvidXchange to automate AP processes and payments.
By doing that, the company sped up payments and lowered costs by eliminating paper check printing, envelopes and the costs of postage.
During the past few years, Providence Management searched for the best automated accounts payable (AP) software to process its payments.
But in 2017 the company switched to another software provider for AP processing — yet discovered the new plan wasn’t panning out. So in 2020 the company switched back to using AvidPay.
To learn more about this situation and why the company decided to use AvidPay again, we spoke with one of the firm’s account operations managers, Kelly Shoemake. Here’s what she told us:
The challenge: “Sub-par” accounting software
Before switching back to AvidPay, Providence Management used another AP system. As it turned out, there were too many late payments, high fees and an overly complicated payment reconciliation process, she said.
“There were an excessive number of inefficiencies with our payment system that caused a lot of mistakes and wasted too much of our finance team’s valuable time, Shoemake said. “The overall performance of the software was sub-par and we had to make a change.”
“We’re able to process payments faster with fewer mistakes, and that’s great for controlling our spending and strengthening our business relationships. We’re so glad and relieved to again be gaining efficiency and integration benefits of AvidPay,” Shoemake said.
The solution: More seamless, efficient payment processing
That change was a return to AvidPay. And once that happened, the performance of the company’s automated AP processes improved dramatically.
She said her company has also been pleased that the integration of AvidPay with her company’s software took less than six weeks, and that the renewed working relationship with AvidXchange has been easy and productive.
Customer Profile
Industry: Real Estate
Products used: AvidPay
Year Joined: 2013, 2020
The results: AvidPay eliminates several hours of work
Providence Management Company processes an average of 1,900 payments per month. Using the previous software was time-consuming, expensive and mistake-prone. But since the return to AvidPay these problems have gone away and her workdays have improved giving her time to focus on more strategic work rather than manual tasks.
“AvidPay has made a very daunting payment task much more manageable,” she said. “Using this automated software has taken several hours off my plate that would normally be spent on payment processing each week.”
AvidPay’s AP automation has also helped the real estate company overcome slowdowns in regular mail deliveries caused by widespread supply chain bottlenecks.
When vendors reach out to her asking for payment information, she told us she sends them AvidXchange’s one-page brochure on how to sign up for AvidPay.
“It’s great to be back with AvidXchange,” she said. “What a relief to be using again a dependable and efficient software collaborating with helpful AvidXchange people. They’re focused on solving my company’s payment challenges.”
