Accounts Payable Outsourcing Goes Mainstream

New technology creates affordable resource for small and mid-sized businesses

Huntington Learning Center helps children all over the country reach their full learning potential. But as franchise owner Bill Goldenberg discovered, even the oldest provider of supplemental education services can learn something new.

With three learning center locations and nearly 50 employees, Goldenberg was experiencing big company accounting challenges in a small business setting. “We weren’t ready for a full-time bookkeeper,” Goldenberg said, “but the invoices and expense reports still needed to be tracked and paid.”

Accounts payable processing for the franchise locations fell mostly on senior management. As his business advanced, Goldenberg knew the time his team spent handling accounts payable documents was distracting from operations that make a difference in children’s lives – as well as business growth.

To complicate matters each center had its own document organization system, which made it time consuming and expensive to find documents and related information. The system – or lack of one – just wasn’t making the grade.

“These challenges were costing management several hours on invoice processing every month. Tracking our invoices became an issue that could not be overlooked, and we knew we needed a centralized document management system,” Goldenberg explained.

The solution? IntelAccount’s web-based accounts payable and document management services, a small business outsourcing solution with big business benefits.

The Journey

“Often, small and medium-sized businesses spend proportionately more time and money processing and paying bills than larger companies,” explained David Crane, founder and CEO of IntelAccount. “For years, large companies have improved productivity and saved significant time and money by outsourcing their payables, often to off-shore providers.”

“IntelAccount makes powerful accounts payable services and technology available to smaller organizations so they can enjoy the same benefits as the largest global companies,” Crane said. “Our system works with most accounting software packages, and we do all of our processing in the USA.”

IntelAccount’s accounts payable processing services deliver digital document management, web-based invoice routing and approval, and electronic payments to vendors and employees. Significant time can be saved -- cutting bill payment tasks from days to hours -- while leaving total control of the process with the client. (To calculate potential internal costs and savings go to click here )

Through IntelAccount the accounts payable process is accomplished with the click of a mouse button. IntelAccount also enhances security because there is no more routing paper around the office or to other locations; no printing, no signing or mailing checks, and no more filing and storing paper documents.

The Results

IntelAccount now processes and digitally stores all payable documents for Goldenberg’s Huntington Learning Center franchises. Scanned and entered daily, document images are made accessible 24/7 through a private, secure web interface. The website also consolidates accounts payable information for all the centers, standardizing record storage so there are no more lost documents and older documents can be retrieved in seconds by any authorized user.

What was a large drain of valuable time became a non-issue. “Payables took too much of my time, Goldenberg explained. “With IntelAccount, I now have more time to focus on my centers. IntelAccount processes my invoices and pays my vendors for a lot less than the cost of a bookkeeper. And the fact that my company is ‘greener’ by using less paper just sweetens the deal.”

“Payroll outsourcing used to be just for big companies. Now companies of all sizes outsource payroll to third parties because it is easier, faster, safer, and cheaper than doing it internally,” Crane said. “Outsourcing accounts payable provides many of the same benefits to organizations large and small. Companies need to focus all their resources on core business activities to compete effectively and grow their businesses. Outsourcing accounts payable through IntelAccount allows organizations to take advantage of the best systems and processes without taking critical resources away from profit-generating activities.”

Quick Facts

• Web-based invoice approval routing prevents invoices from getting lost during approval routing and allows 24/7 system access by remote approvers from anywhere in the world.
  
  
• Invoices are digitally stored so they are secure, confidential and available in seconds from any computer - even older invoices that used to be stored off-site.
  
  
• Clients save up to 70 percent as compared to internal accounts payable processing costs.