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Automated invoices for Operations

[Music] welcome we'll get started shortly before we begin here's how to earn continuing professional education credit for attending this session there are no polling questions or attendance checks instead you will demonstrate your knowledge by taking a brief multiple choice quiz using the earmark app visit earmark doapp in your web browser you can also download the mobile app by scanning the QR code on the screen log in or if you're new create your free account be sure to use a valid email address because that's where we'll send your course completion certificates from the home screen scroll down to find the course you can also tap the magnifying glass icon to search for the course tap on the course artwork then the enroll button on the course tab you'll find the recording and quiz questions complete the quiz to earn your CPE certificate it takes us a few days to create the course on the app so if you are attending this session live please wait a few days we'll email you a link to the course when it is ready if you have questions or need help email us at support earmark cp.com and now on to the event well howdy everybody thank you for joining today I know you may think that I am hosting this entire thing myself but of course I'm not special shout out to earmark webinars for hosting the use uh company and coming to you with h checking out the future B2B digital payments special shout out to Zach that's in the background who's making this happen that's Steve for you Zach now I know I know you may be thinking well who is this guy Casey well I hope today I get to uh not only introduce myself but also just share with you over a cup of coffee if you will I have my Gatorade but maybe you have a coffee in hand um what uh what we know about the B2B digital payment space little background on myself I've actually been here at use for man almost seven years now how time flies when you're having fun uh just uh in that seven years I have seen a lot of not only AP automation companies but also payment automation companies come and go uh inside of the market Rebrand all kinds of fun stuff so if you're ever looking for um a particular partner for your AP Automation and digital payment um Adventure look no further than you so we have a lot of experience here uh inside of the space itself currently reside in Alvaro Texas which is just outside of DFW I do have a wife four children a big old Mastiff cat chickens and my wife is even talking about adding a bunny to the farm so um we uh we like to have a lot of fun here and with four kids um all under five it is a lot of work in handson so just to forewarn you if someone Kicks Down the door and start screaming at me I apologize I'll take care of that and get them out so that way we can get back to the webinar now did mention with those CPE credits and this online course it actually is faster than a few days now because um just like you earmark has been expanding through the years and they're going to get that turned around for you um within a day or two so be looking um for that course quiz in order to get those CPE credits now with that let's go ahead and get kicked off in today's uh webinar so just to talk about a quick agenda first we're going to start off with just talking about what are digital payments so that way we can just Baseline with a consensus on what are digital payments and what do they consist of then we'll move into the why manual processes versus digital payments and how that can impact your organization and then we'll also look into the fraud results what types of payments have the highest fraud potential why are more people moving into things like virtual credit cards or Merchant systems and getting away from paper checks as well as AC and then we're also going to dive into how to take your AP department from a cost center to a profit Center why um maintaining and taking advantage of rebates that are out there in the merchant systems of the world and then we're going to take a little touch into the future of those B2B payments and how those look let's dive in hopefully you're excited if you do have any questions please add them to the comment section inside of the Imark webinar platform here and we will have a question and answer towards the end of today's presentation so first and uh foremost before we even get into defining digital payments we actually want wanted to um share some research with you we conducted an annual survey with well over 1,500 Global Finance leaders um across uh the globe and we asked them hey what um how do you pay currently inside of your organization what we found the results is that 60% of people are actually paying on time 24% pay from Advance 9% late and 7% actually have no pattern or don't know which was a head scratcher for me because if they're a financial leader they should have um uh knowledge of that particular uh process inside of their organization but some of those Global Financial leaders still haven't automated said processes so they don't have that real-time visibility into how those payments are actually handled they just rely on their teams to take care of it which could be a dangerous situation if you if you're a small startup that are getting up and running without having those particular processes in place the good news here though is not too many people are paying late uh which is always a great way to avoid you know paying extra late fees getting into issues with your particular vendor relationships um it looks like the um majority there are paying on time which is absolutely wonderful nearly a quarter pay in advance which is a lot of Prior manufacturing companies that actually are cutting POS and have to prepay in order for the production of that manufacturer to send them their supplies um in order to process um orders for their particular clients now um if you are paying late this could be due to a whole slew of different things that we are going to get into today maybe the actual front-end process itself with your um accounts payable uh is all still manual you're you know exchanging around emails you're actually passing around paper in your organization which could cause just the actual payment itself to become late itself but then also people are still cutting checks dropping those in the mail they get lost they don't know until they get a call from that said vendor and say hey we have not actually received your payment yet then it becomes a Chase game of the paper inside of the organization or where it was sent out now um if you have the ability to pay on time uh be excuse me having the ability to pay on time of course advances those vendor relationships you can also start taking advantage of things like early paid discounts a lot of people have those net 30 and 45 terms but if they reach out to their vendors and say hey I have a new automated process in place that we can get your payments faster what if we turn those net 30 or 45 terms into net five or 10 what kind of discounts can we take advantage of that just goes into some of the cost savings that come into the actual digital payments itself now what are digital payments just to make sure we're all clear and on the same page digital payments include any method of transferring money or digital currencies between two parties using digital payment Technologies you might think of this like uh your digital wallet Apple pay a transfers heck wire transfers cryptocurrencies credit cards and I'm sure there's many many more that I'm forgetting off the top of my head so my question to you would be how do you typically pay when you go shop you either probably take out your credit card and tap it with your chip and it automatically um processes or you can even take out your smartphone with your Apple pay or whatever you may use and tap that for the actual payment itself far gone are the days where we're pulling out checkbooks and actually manually writing checks at the cashier station in order to pay for purchases why is this well it's just speed it makes it faster and easier just out your credit card and tap it on the screen and or insert that particular chip so that way you can process that um uh payment um now checks and cash of course take longer mess your process and heck I don't know the last time if you try to pay cash but a lot of tellers today completely rely on the the information coming out of the computer because they don't know how to do the actual math in their head anymore on how to uh pay back the cash after getting paid a 20 off of a 18 F transaction some people still try to give you 250 and you're like hey sorry that's it's a dollar back to you you may want to double check that math there oh I'm so sorry I don't know what just happened there let me go back exactly to where we were there we go um now if you aren't already leveraging digital payments inside of your organization maybe by the end of this presentation um you'll actually do the same as you do in your personal life with your business so let's go ahead and move on to our next slide which uh again going back to that survey we've asked over uh, 1500 Financial leaders um what are the top reasons to actually Implement digital payments inside of your organization and here's what we found most people just want faster processing in order to start getting um not only things within their net terms but again start to move towards those early paid discounts there's also just redu a reduction in the actual expense that it takes to process an invoice because if you think about manual processes from the beginning all the way through to the end especially if you're still cutting check there's a lot of time and cost it takes to go into that maybe you're still printing off those particular invoices passing those around that's paper in cost then after it gets its approval then you have that paper stub uh excuse me paper check that you're printing off from your Erp again paper ink cost um then you're going to have your mailing cost envelopes stuffing those envelopes stamping the envelopes and then dropping them off with said carrier this can all really start adding up into the cost of the invoice processing itself the other is just ensuring accurate payments um I had just had a call with a particular client yesterday and they're still doing their um checks manually out of their uh particular Erp and they ask hey how can I quickly pull a report that says hey I paid with check XYZ and it automatically pulls out all the invoices that are on said check and I was like well that's a report that hopefully you can pull out of your Erp but if not if you actually digitize those payments with a solution like use then it's simple as just a quick search for that check number hit enter and it pulls up all the admittance for that uh particular check this really expedites things like Audits and going to find information inside of your organization whenever you need to look back on your past finances now of course the reason we also want to ensure accurate payments is because of the uplift of fraud fraud is um of course always prevalent in inside of organizations um people are trying to get your access to your account information which if it printed off right there on a check then it's easily obtainable now I'm not uh I'm surprised that we don't see the list of security and fraud protection uh as far as as part of this survey um but we will most definitely be touching on that later on in today's presentation now if you want to compare your progress to a lot of global progresses that we see inside the digital payment um AUM adoption itself what we have seen is about 52% of companies have already adopted types of digital payments which is absolutely exciting it shows you the trend of the market itself as they move into those digital payment space another 38% which is a huge chunk of the market is actually planning to adopt in the next 12 months I've always said that there's a difference between planning to do something and actually taking the action to do it those are two different um points of contingency there and um I love the saying three birds are sitting on a power line to decide to fly away how many birds are left on the power line I'll give you a minute to answer the answer is still three because even if you decide to do something if you don't take the proper action it'll never get done inside of your life now that little nugget Dro there from Casey dial is a something that I need to reflect on as well because I decid to do a lot of things with my kids but then after four of them run over you it's a little hard to get have the motivation to get up and to get after it because your energy is just so depleted now 7% actually have no plans to adopt and that's very curious to me curious on why you wouldn't want to keep your business up with the times and also get away from the potential of opening up yourself to things like fraud now the 3% of the I don't knows out there again that was a head scratcher for me but hey that's always a part of the surveys there now those of you who aren uh haven't actually started using digital payments Year you still might be using those paper checks which we are alluded to some of the things that come with that but let's dive deeper on the reasons paper checks might be holding you back again the inefficient and costly manner of actually cutting the chance there's still that manual process of getting the invoice I don't know if it's inside of your Erp and you actually authorize it from the Erp and it prints out but I still have have heard of companies that even after they input the data manually into their Erp they have to print off the invoice print off the check write down the information staple that to the actual invoice and then set it on somebody's desk to then go through that stack review the invoice look at the check and sign off manually on those particular checks you think about all the paper as well as just time that goes into that uh when you could have a digital process that actually automates that for you now of course anything that comes with human manual intervention always H opens up the room for manual errors I don't know if you've ever been typing something and you accidentally hit an extra key not meaning to but it happens all the time which is exactly why you have those checks and balances in place but it is prone to more manual error obviously this is going to cause track uh transaction delays because the processing time is lengthy I don't know if you've ever actually set something on somebody's desk the cleaning crew comes in and the next week you get a call from the supplier hey where was check for invoice XYZ I remember dropping that off on Frank's desk let me actually go check with Frank and Frank says hey I never got that so now you have to go back into your application print it off cut another check and then send out that uh get that reapprovals particular checks just weren't moved to another part of Frank's office and Frank finds them at a later a date and he's like Oh I thought I already authorized these let me go ahead and do that again now you're sending out double payments to your vendors and you're starting to lose on your cash flow now of course during the actual time of um manual check writing it in transit Etc you're going to have just lack of visibility into where those particular invoices or payments are um so if you do get that vendor call then that's when you again have to go start tracking that particular information down for you so I don't know if you recently actually been a recipient of the check but if you're still accepting checks from your particular clients then you know that there's always the gap of time when you get those inside the mail or they're handed off by uh your uh management staff or your sales staff or anything like that but then you got to run it down to the bank actually deposit those and there's just a gap of time you may be doing some Audits and reconciling your books and notice hey vendor XYZ still hasn't even cashed that particular check we sent that weeks ago giveing them a call and they're like oh yeah it's on the desk I just haven't had a chance to run to the bank yet and that's really going to start um messing with your cash flow whenever you're doing your audits now of course you're also exposing yourself to higher fraud uh risk of fraud of course with that check itself having your account information as well as routing information if it's intercepted inside of the mail not only can people whitewash the check and pay themselves but they also have your account information that they can start going after after the funds inside of that account I believe we recently did a survey that actually said uh I believe it was 67% of actual payment fraud out there is because of intercepted paper checks which is a huge risk it was about uh 30% of which was actually AC because you're still collecting that actual accounting information from your vendors and sending your accounting information out to said vendors in order to receive that even in the digital format that's why later on we'll see that more and more people are transitioning to things like virtual credit cards and then also the future of the digital payments are getting more way more secure as we continue to move into the actual future itself now I know I have a personal story about check writing itself I know back in the day you had all kinds of different careers and one of my careers when I was 16 years old is I was actually the front-end man manager of a Kroger which is a grocery chain here in Texas now I I remember that we were actually tracked with kpis on how fast we could get transactions done as carts were pulling up to our stations not only did we track the items a number of items you could process in a minute but also how long it took from the beginning of transaction to the actual um putting either the cash in it or them running their credit card and whenever we would have that individual pull out that particular check and start writing it down or we would just go white in the face because we just realize that we're going to add a few minutes to that transaction time now don't tell anybody but what we used to do is just suspend the transaction until we um actually obtained all the information to support that check then we would reopen the transaction and process the cut down on the time just a secret between you and me don't call my Kroger manager from back in the day and tell them but if you think about paying uh with paper checks even at the cash register then you have to whip out your ID they have to get check the address information make sure all the correct information's there they even take down your driver's license information that right there can even get into the hands of individuals who may come in and actually Rob the store then all of a sudden they have your account information your address location and you start getting all these credit card um things in the mail that say you owe all this money never is situation that anybody wants to be in so what are the most common uh digital payments out there excuse me I'm sorry on the flip side digital payments um uh you are going to exper erience of course faster payment times which again opens up the realm of just tracking with visibility which we'll get into in a sec uh some digital payment methods are faster than others you know you do have your ACS out there that could take up to five business days just to clear out the Clearing House you have your virtual cards that can take as um as few as three days to process then of course you have your wires out there that can instantly transfer funds but hey I don't know when the last time you process a wire it's very expensive to transfer those automatically now of course with these faster payments and real time tracking it just gives you more control into your processes itself it's helpful for tracking your cash flow and your vendors that are going to be paid faster which helps strengthen those relationships themselves we've heard some horror stories of AP teams that are just behind because of manual processes at an organization and their suppliers actually start withholding supplies that they're sending to the company just because of those payment delays now you're also um having the um cost lowered to you because you're eliminating the paper and mailing costs as well as just the time of the actual counting team itself happen to stuff those envelopes and getting multiple paper cuts and I know you may be sitting out there saying Casey I absolutely love paper cuts and I love stop stamping envelopes and I'm still one that actually licks the envelope and doesn't use the little uh wedding tools that are out there hey to each their own um but a lot of companies as well as individuals are getting away from those particular process processes to actually free up your time so that way you can start focusing on things like vendor analysis cost comparisons what vendors are open to early paid discounts open up those communication with your particular vendors to start really getting the revenue um of the company increase by decreasing the cost of doing business now of course with digital payments as well there are audit Trails out there so that way you have those that are supporting your particular audits that you may be going through now digital payments are going to give you um better security and praud fraud prevention like we've already discussed and virtual credit cards that have really started taking over the market are stting to open up the realm of less than 1% of fraud um out there for virtual cards because that virtual card is a unique credit card number that's produced per payment so even in the happen stance that those fraud frauders out there if you want to call them frauders it always reminds me of the Frogger game those those people conduct fraud out there even if they get a hold of that virtual credit card that hasn't been uh deposited yet they can only get the amount that is associated with that card and not have your credit limit to play with which is always a good thing so speaking of uh these particular digital payments of a and virtual credit cards um let's really start focusing on these because they are the most common too now uh AC which stands for automated Clearing House is is actually pulled directly from your check-in account and processed um on only on the bank days themselves the a network actually process $8.2 billion in payments in q1 of 2024 alone if I could just get 0.1% of that I would be happy but hey that's just me now the pros of a transaction is they are of course faster than paper checks um with funds ref received within a few days to five days it's also paper no printing postage required and its cost effective ranging anywhere from 25 to 50 cents per transaction um and there are always cons to Pros right so what are some cons of a well funds can only be transferred during the banking hours that means if you cut it on Friday and then there's a holiday well heck now you're starting to get into day delays um before that vendor actually receiv receives those funds it does require sensitive banking information such as your account numbers to either be housed inside of your organization for your vendors or you're sending those out to vendors that have to be housed and there's ever a security breach everybody's got in that email hey we had a breach of security you may want to check into your B your bank statements make sure nothing you know fraudulent happening Etc and that always has our heart syn people who have been subject to fraud and you know that it's a huge hassle to actually get turned around and get all that particular um paperwork organized and all the account information changed now um transaction fees still do apply with a so that is always another con because obviously we're trying to eliminate as much cost going out um as possible now let's look at virtual credit cards these are digital cards that are pre-funded again one-time use cards that would require only electronic card number for transactions the global value of card transaction card transactions if I can speak today is rapidly growing and expected to reach 6.8 trilli Brillion transaction uh by 2026 I've also seen another uh Trend out there that says um vendors themselves are really opening up to gain uh set up and maintain Merchant accounts just to get away from the fraudulent and receive their payments faster now the pros to this of course is the payments are very fast faster than a and they're a very convenient way to maintain control and visibility into your invoice payments themselves and uh it's more scalable cheaper a lot of times virtual cards are nothing to send because um the actual bank transaction is taken a cut from The Merchant accounts themselves that can fluctuate from two to 3% and a lot of um banking transactions uh with virtual cards actually share in that Revenue with you that's a little hint towards how we can take um your AP department from a cost center to a profit Center taking advantage of those rebates now of course this creates a new level of security by generating that unique number for each of those transactions so that way it is unique every time that you're sending that payment so even if it is captured it's still unique to that specific payment and they don't have access to the full account and vendors um just like virtual cards they love the streamlined process the userfriendly experience and now of course there are always cons to U their certain payments as well the cons as of right now in the virtual Card Market is pretty limited but it's limited to your vendors some vendors just don't accept virtual card and or even credit card payments because they haven't set up those merchant account systems a lot of these vendors may be you know smaller mom and pop shops that just don't want to take to two to 3% hit which of course they can still transact in a or credit card themselves or even cash if you if you have some of those particular vendors now looking into the fraud attempts I was actually alluding to this earlier and I forgot that we even had it in here um but let's take a deeper dive into payment fraud itself so fraud does happen to everybody I mean heck I think when I was 18 I got a Best Buy credit card in the mail it says thanks for signing up a Best Buy here's your credit card and I was like I didn't sign up for a credit card well then about a week later I get a Best Buy bill for $6,000 inside of the mail and I was like hold the phone uh ended up calling Best Buy um we looked into it heck I think it took probably a week of just phone calls and follow-ups and everything else so they identified via camera the guy who stole my identity opened up that credit card and bought I think it was five TVs three DVD players and two gaming consoles and uh and and took it home with them which you know hey I guess kudos to him for getting that stuff but luckily Best Buy worked with me we were able to get that all res resolved and I didn't have to actually pay for that particular uh card charge now checks again up to 65% of checks that's where the fraud comes from so the types of fraud that we see and the fraud that's out there 65% come from check uh interception so ing to the AFP methods uh the uh 65% of respondents have actually already been victims of fraud uh via check the next one on the list was a with 33% of people experiencing fraud just from a interception and then of course the virtual cards they like to put 3% out there um which of course comes um with those particular cards but again minimal impact for those cards since it is a unique number there are other um areas to consider as far as fraud and the r raise rise of AI out there a lot of frauders are utilizing these particular AP Technologies and a excuse me AI Technologies in order to go and and scrub and script and try to um get into the back end of your applications through your security firewalls and start creating that heck I even know some AI in out there which we um have actually caught with our uh AP Mo excuse me AP automation is they will actually start producing and sending a company multiple invoices that look very professional and well done and but it says oh accounting information's changed and it starts actually trying to get you to pay their account now of course a lot of people see those and they call their vendor to um to confirm and they catch it that way but the use of AI technology is absolutely becoming uh a catalyst for more fraud out there now of course that is just one way that they're becoming more creative in their ways um with extra security measure measures such as utilizing virtual cards getting away from those check and achs you're just minimizing the openness that you have to putting yourself in that position of fraud now I'm want to spend a few T minutes here just specifically on Virtual cards themselves that a way we can focus in now traditionally in the AP department it's known as a costly area of business but with digital payments such as virtual card you have the opportunity to turn that around and even start creating a new Revenue stream inside of your organization now of course reducing fraud is a great way to create more Revenue because you're not having to uh take care of all the fraudulent transactions that may come with a or check but you're also protecting yourself from those gradal loss uh it's fast for vendors so again a lot of vendors are open uh to actually start um opening uh excuse me start open to start offering early paid discounts if you drop your net 30 and 45 terms to those net five and 10 since the funds are actually being instantly transferred you're able to capitalize on those particular uh terms in order to uh gain those early paid discounts now of course a great area of impact um is having uh cash back opportunities a lot of virtual card programs out there offer cash back and if since more and more vendors are starting to open up those merch accounts and flowing towards that side of business then it opens up the ability to utilize those rebates now I don't know if you've ever uh capitalized on some of these rebates just with your own personal credit card offers that offer one to two% cash back but that's just the same exact way that businesses are starting to perform as well now we personally have customers who have flipped from hey How much does it cost to actually support my AP automation through use and how much are we expecting to get Revenue wise uh from the cash back and what we show inside of our analysis is hey we're actually pretty comfortable and close so that way you're getting your AP automation paid for by your virtual card rebase we've even had some clients that flip the script and actually earn more back in rebates uh then uh we actually uh uh then they actually invest into the used platform so then we are cutting out payment directly to those said customers not only are they getting their solution for free but now they've also increased their revenue of the company itself so let's start taking a look into the future what is the future of uh payments look like well we've talked about you know manual payments the most common type of digital payments so let's talk about the future we have a few ER up on the screen that you might be familiar with or heck you may have never even heard about to be completely Frank and honest with you transparent I had never even heard of these until um I was actually preparing for this um webinar and speaking with our direct CFO in inside of our organization as we are getting uh ready for this particular session now there is a a Resurgence of new technology that's coming out there uh things like realtime payment networks or rtps um fed now which is also a real time that's actually through the um the Federal Reserve payments are transaction through the Federal Reserve and instant and it's an instant uh push rather than the delayed uh Clearing House transactions such as ACH crypto as you know is always uh climbing up declining climbing up declining but it's also becoming a part of our payment cycle itself now um it may be a volatile crypto Market out there and pricing is a risky option but many businesses are actually starting to turn to it as a new Option of accepting payments in crypto itself I just did it again sorry guys uh the um now the FED now is gaining a lot of velocity and operates more like a vinmo um or guaranteed funds payment sent through uh from bank account to bank account and that's straight through again the Federal Reserve and then this uh and uh the check clearing itself in acch in the US is done very similar now the system in the background moving the money between the banks is um that Federal Reserve but it always has to go through the Clearing House so now they're actually going to be crediting it and sending it in real time rather than waiting for that Clearing House itself realtime payments are very similar again to the vinmo to where it's actually a separate Network that is actually transaction and crediting um those particular transactions that way they're in real time rather than having to wait I'm sure everybody here has used a Zale or a vinmo to either pay someone who's come by to do work at their house or tree cutting electrician Plumbing work it's a great way for small businesses to get paid instantly rather than having to accept cash check um or even set up a information and sending uh that information uh directly to them via email um now uh pushing money so you don't uh pushing money through these particular accounts um has it where you don't have have to share your bank account information which is huge because that of course reduces that fraud and you can wait until the last minute to pay maybe you don't have maybe you're running a very tight ship and you don't have the full cash on hand that week in order to pay that transaction but hey you have Net 30 Terms you have another week in order to get cash in in then you can wait till the last minute to actually release that particular payment and it's done instantly now here's a big one that um that is outside of the a realm that can take up to five days or even the virtual cards that can take three it is um available 247 and it can accelerate your payment cycle so no longer you have to wait on the actual Banks to be open themselves you can instantly push these particular payments through these types of future payment options so guys I know you may be thinking hey I've heard a lot about payments but Casey keeps alluding to uh AP automation as well in the front end so what is that who is used so that's why we wanted to start wrapping up this particular presentation with who are we so use itself we were actually born in the cloud in 2010 we are a PTP automator purchase all the way to pay now a lot of people see the born in the cloud 20 10 say oh you have about 14 years of experience which is absolutely true at this date and time but what they don't know is we actually came from our parent company ID asoft now idof has over 37 years of data extraction workflow optimization and data analytic experience underneath their belt but they specialize on very heavily customized on premise solutions for those large Enterprise networks that have very robust and big systems what they realized in 2010 as Cloud was On The Rise is that they could take this Enterprise level technology and AI engine and actually put it uh into the cloud so we can offer it to the smaller midsize Market which is exactly what we did in 2010 Off to the Races we have gone you could say we now have over 5,000 clients globally in over 40 countries we've processed over 200 million documents through use um which actually builds up that big data and it gives us the AI data extraction that is industry leading out of the Box are extraction rates um which happens within 20 to 30 seconds actually extracts up to 83% of things that you're typically typing in now we have a whole schw of clients who have actually increased that to 95 to even 98% by cleaning up their vendor files so that way they don't have duplicate vendors and working with their vendors to get more highquality images just so you know the industry standard out there is 75% extraction so even out of the box we're crushing that and we have clients that are way higher almost close to 100% with the extracted information now how do we do that and how do we keep developing well luckily for you we're actually a privately held company so we don't have investors to um speak to we actually um have to have direct relationships with our clients and listen to those clients and that's why we love to say welcome to the use family as you're joining the used platform you can see there that 25% of our income is is still being reinvested back into research and development and this is LED and fed by our clients so it's not like we're designing things that we think would be nice for the market out there we're actually listening to client feedback and they are driving the way that we're developing our program most recently we actually just released our used vendor statements so I don't know how many companies out there are actually reconciling their vendor statements as they should just for my own personal poll that I've been taking on my Discovery calls I would say 90% of companies out there aren't even reconciling their actual vendor statements with use the vendor statement can automatically uh be uploaded it'll look at all the invoices in the background and extract line level detail directly from that vendor statement and match that vendor statement to your uh invoices inside of our application and it'll even flag and say hey we either have a price variance on some of these we uh don't have an invoice in the system for this particular invoice or we haven't paid out of the back end yet this is opening up a whole new um way to actually just gain visibility and make sure that you're maintaining uh your particular books so what does the P2P process look like and what can we handle is it just a cookie cutter open box and and what you guys can do or is it customized to me and my business that's an absolutely great question and that's exactly why I like to throw up this workflow side so we can talk about the differences maybe you're a company out there who hasn't even taken the enture into purchase requests and purchase orders that's completely fine you can um we are all a cart here at use and we can just focus on your invoice automation itself capturing in those invoices within 20 to 30 seconds spitting out those non-po invoices uh with not only the header field data that's typically being typed in but also through our machine learning we start memorizing your coding habits now those codes are going to be memorized per vendor per location so if you do utilize vendors throughout multiple entities organ or locations inside for your network we can help you with that memorization there now of course you see that review approve and payment process right there in the middle as far as workflows we do have unlimited amount of workflows AC designated and designed for your organization whether you want to start looking into things over $5,000 need at least two approvers we can um of course set up workflows like that uh you can do things like uh tolerances in play and you can even skip over the payment automation portion at the end if you're not looking to quite take that step into digitizing those payments yet which of course if you're on this webinar I think you may be um of that large percentage in that first survey we did that's looking to make a move within the next 12 months now you may be a full-blown manufacturing facility that needs purchases and maybe uh your particular uh maybe you're growing in your particular Erp right now doesn't really maintain that very well for you well that's where a purchasing module can be actually instilled where you can create requisitions that go off to management or purchasing for approval send out to vendor there is a Goods reception step which of course when the invoice comes in we're matching the goods reception to the actual invoice amount to make sure we have a good three-way match there you may be raising your hand and saying Casey we already have a great prpo process but after we get the invoices in we're starting to manually type that data in and do the manual matching and then exception management comes in and exception management is a whole another U part of manual processes where we're exchanging emails or running down asking questions or teams chatting people Etc I really wish I had a program that could just help with that particular process if you already have a purchase requisition and PO process in place in your Erp no worries we can in ingest that particular information from your Erp so that way we have the PO data as well as your master data inside house inside of you so when those invoices do come in we can automate that particular match and if there is an exception that is had outside of those tolerances you may put in place those particular um Communications can be done directly internally in our tool so from an audit history standpoint you have the invoice data the invoice image you can attach any type of supporting documents to that particular invoice that we have all your uh supporting documents there and a full audit history it'll show exactly when it came in who touched it what was changed who approved it when it was exported when it was paid how it was paid Etc now you do see that top process there of No touch processes that's the end goal of any automator out there and I feel I know I'm not biased or anything but I feel like use is H it really does it the best because not only can we put no touch processes in place for those po types of invoices that have those three-way matches that can be sent into use directly matched and send into a payment authorization step or directly into your Erp for payment but we can also have those no touch processes for non-purchase order uh invoices those invoices come in if you think about like your utility bills utility bills come in it goes to the same account every single month and as long as it's not over let's just say $1,500 we don't really care to look at it so that invoice comes in extracted by our data extraction within 20 30 seconds it's already coded and in your Erp or to our payment authorization step without you having to lift a finger now you may be thinking well how are we getting invoices into the application in the first place we see in that capture space there we can do email Auto forwards you can drag and drop from your email you can take a picture of your smartphone you can do a scan to email and the great thing if you're still very heavily paper based on receiving your invoices is we have what's called a u stamp now this UST stamp is a proprietary technology where you can stamp the front side of your invoices and after you get done opening up the mail you have about 30 invoices you need to upload to the system traditionally with other uh competitors out there you have to individually scan those one by one wait for it to complete but with that digital with that stamp it actually automatically separates those so you can just set it on the scanner bulk scan walk away and do what you need to do for the rest of your work now you can see down there in the uh bottom as well we do have the budgeting tool out there um so that way if you do need uh the ability to actually set budgets purchase against those budgets and track hey what is my budget set to what's been promised against that budget and what actually been invoiced against the budget you can track those budgets via use as well already alluded to the vendor statements out there that we just launched and you see inside of that payment um itself how we can support those several types of payments we do have the virtual card that comes with a point 6% cash back rebate um that goes directly to your used Bill and again if you flip that and you end up making more Revenue than the actual um investment for you then we're going to cat you a payment direct we still do support ACH and papercheck so even if your vendors do require paper check you are no longer having to print those out get them signed step them in the envelopes and send them out if it's actually authorizing our system within 3 pm eastern time it's released the same day and of course the typical day turnaround time is five business days from there now you do see that export out there's a nice piece there it says 250 Financial systems we have connected to well over 250 erps third party po systems Etc now of course we have a a whole shw of outof the-box apis that are built out for like your QuickBooks Online your intax your acumatica net Suites Etc but if you still do have a system that doesn't have those open rest apis we can do flat file exchanges and we we are more than vers to helping your team and or a third party with that connection itself thank you guys so much for the time today I'm excited to continue to explore not only digital payment automation itself but also just your AP Automation in general as we move here into 2025 now if there's any questions out there I would love to answer those so let me go ahead and take a look and see if anybody has uh posted any I do see one here um that is asking about the actual suppliers accepting virtual cards will all my suppliers um actually accept virtual cards well no because some don't want to set up the merchant system and take that particular two to 3% hit whatever it may be they don't mind waiting a little bit more for their cash flow but the trends out there are showing that more and more Merchants are actually going to that particular uh Merchant Network the reason for that is what we just explained today less fraud faster payments Etc if you want to throw a percentage out there we actually do hear at use we do vendor comparisons U and an an analysis if you're interested in actually digitizing those payments with virtual card you send us your vendor um vendor information of who you pay uh what vendors excuse me you pay and uh the cost that you've done within a year and we'll actually take that run it against our vendor analysis which we have over two million vendors inside of our catalog and we'll show hey these particular vendors are open so here's your potential rebate savings as the trends continue to work we actually have a whole line of vendors that are working right now to set up their merchant systems so then after they complete that you can expect X back that's just a great way way to start really uh getting the ROI for yourselves to take internally to your exective management to not only say hey are you guys looking to increase your Revenue cut cost get rid of fraud because if so I just saw a really great presentation from this crazy guy at use and I think that they can be a help so thank you again guys if you need to reach out to us for for book a demo Discovery if you have any questions in general please take a screenshot of this or of course go back inside of the Imark webinars site and get this contact information we're so happy that you chose to be here today and we don't take that lightly we're excited to support you going into the future that take it away my friend today's event has ended to earn CPE go to ear mark. apppp or scan the QR code on the screen then log in or create your free account search for the course by tapping on the magnifying glass icon on the home screen and then entering the name of this event it takes a few days to make the course so if you're attending this event live keep an eye out for an email letting you know when the course is available pass the quiz to earn your CPE then tap the button to email yourself a certificate stay tuned for more events from your mark thanks for joining us and we hope to see you again soon