Transforming Accounts Payable from Bottleneck to Strategic Asset

A national maintenance company with over 400 service locations was bleeding money through late payment fees while their accounts payable team drowned in manual invoice processing. For four decades, they had built a trusted janitorial and facilities services operation—but their back-office infrastructure couldn't keep pace. Invoice approvals stalled, vendor communications went unanswered, and manual data entry consumed entire workdays. The lack of visibility into payment status meant late fees piled up, vendor relationships suffered, and the finance team had no clear picture of cash flow timing. What should have been a routine administrative function had become a costly operational liability.

The Challenge

The Invoice-to-Pay process was a grueling manual gauntlet. Accounts payable staff handled every invoice rejection, chased down approvals, performed three-way matching between invoices and purchase orders, and manually entered data into the ERP system. Each step introduced delay and the possibility of human error. Processing a single invoice could involve multiple systems, several team members, and days of elapsed time.

The consequences were financial and operational. Late fees eroded margins on already-tight maintenance contracts. Vendors grew frustrated with slow payment cycles, risking service relationships critical to daily operations. The AP team, overwhelmed by repetitive data entry, had no bandwidth for vendor negotiations, payment term optimization, or spend analysis. And leadership operated blind—without real-time visibility into invoice volumes, payment timing, or vendor trends, they couldn't make informed cash management decisions.

The company knew they needed automation, but a major ERP replacement or enterprise software overhaul wasn't feasible. They needed a solution that worked with their existing tools—their ERP system, email platform, and recently adopted Smartsheet—without requiring massive capital investment or business disruption.

Project Type

Automation & RPA Project

Industry

Maintenance & Facilities Services

Expertises

Process Automation
Invoice Processing
Financial Operations
Document Intelligence
Workflow Automation

The Integratz Recovery

Integratz deployed the Hyperstack Automation Framework™, orchestrating intelligent digital workers across the company's existing technology stack using UiPath and Microsoft Power Automate. Rather than replacing systems, we engineered an automation layer that connected them, creating a seamless Invoice-to-Pay flow from email intake to payment verification.

The digital workers now manage the complete invoice lifecycle:

Capture incoming invoices directly from the email inbox using Microsoft Azure AI Document Intelligence to extract vendor details, amounts, and line items
Route invoices into Smartsheet for workflow tracking and approval routing
Perform automated three-way matching against purchase orders in the ERP system
Update invoice status in Smartsheet when PO matches confirm approval
Enter approved invoice data into the ERP's General Ledger with complete accuracy
Generate weekly check batches automatically for single-click review and approval
Verify payment completion and update both Smartsheet and the ERP system accordingly

Power Automate orchestrates the entire operation, scheduling daily bot runs, triggering on-demand processing, and sending email notifications when invoices are processed or exceptions require human attention. Nothing falls through the cracks.

But automation alone wasn't enough. Integratz connected the company's data sources into Power BI dashboards, giving leadership real-time visibility into invoice volumes, processing success rates, vendor payment trends, weekly spending patterns, and cash flow timing. For the first time, the finance team could see their entire accounts payable operation at a glance.

The Impact

The transformation was immediate and financial. Process cycle time dropped by 80%, turning multi-day invoice processing into same-day completion. The company eliminated 1 FTE worth of manual labor, freeing the AP team to focus on vendor relationship management and payment optimization rather than data entry. Accuracy improved by 70%, virtually eliminating the costly errors that once triggered late fees and vendor disputes.

Most importantly, late payment fees disappeared, vendor relationships strengthened, and leadership gained the visibility needed for strategic cash management. What began as a manual, error-prone bottleneck became a streamlined, intelligent operation that runs with minimal human intervention. The maintenance company proved that intelligent automation doesn't require replacing your systems—it requires engineering them to work together seamlessly.