How FirstService Residential Streamlined AP and Elevated Service with AI-Driven Automation

Before automating its accounts payable (AP) processes with AvidXchange, FirstService Residential was looking for a solution to inefficiencies due to a lack of streamlined workflows. The company utilizes multiple accounting systems across its operations, so the solution needed to be compatible with a wide range of platforms. Due to the high volume of paper invoices, FirstService utilized multiple credit cards as a streamlined method for managing and processing daily business operating expenses. Without an effective way to manage or track paper invoices, FirstService implemented AvidXchange in 2015 to bring structure and automation to its AP process.

While automation reduced the number of manual touchpoints per invoice—speeding up approvals and enabling faster vendor payments—new challenges continued to emerge. Frequent invoices that couldn’t be auto-processed due to multiple potential matches in the supplier and ship-to fields triggered exceptions, often creating bottlenecks at the start of the approval process. This required employees to verify data in the software or manually input missing details. Faced with the volume of incoming invoices and the fact that each one required three to five minutes to troubleshoot, FirstService realized they would need to dedicate multiple employees just to keep up. As a result, employee overtime increased and staff satisfaction began to decline.