If your office spends Monday mornings sorting PDFs, keying line items, and chasing approvals, you’re paying a hidden tax on vendor bills. The work is important—but most of those keystrokes aren’t. With a few targeted automations, our trades customers regularly see a 70% lift in vendor‑bill productivity (more bills per staff hour), plus fewer errors and fewer fire drills.

Where the time really goes

Most AP desks follow the same pattern:

• Intake: PDFs arrive by email; someone downloads, renames, and files them.

• Coding: Vendor recognized (or not), GL and job/location codes applied, tax flagged, duplicate checked.

• Match & route: PO/receipt match if applicable, then route for approval and chase status.

• Post & pay: Push to accounting, schedule payment, reconcile later.

If you want a yardstick for where you stand, APQC’s benchmarks track things like cost per invoice and cycle time—useful targets when you’re setting goals for an AP cleanup.See APQC’s AP KPI overview › APQC

Before → After: a simple scenario

Your current week (manual‑heavy)

• 200 vendor bills

• ~6 minutes of total staff time per bill (intake, coding, match, route, post)

• Throughput ≈ 10 bills/hour, ~20 hours/week

The same week with light automation

• Capture & vendor recognition auto‑classify incoming PDFs

• GL/job defaults apply; duplicates flagged; 2‑/3‑way match done in the background

• Approvals routed with reminders; only exceptions need eyes

• Quick review + post to accounting

Result: ~3.5 minutes of staff time per bill → 17 bills/hour → ~11.7 hours/week. That’s roughly a 70% productivity lift (bills per staff hour) and 8+ hours back every week—without adding headcount.

(Your exact numbers will vary; we’ll measure your baseline and show the change.)

What we automate first (lowest friction, biggest win)

• Smart intake & vendor normalizationDedicated inbox ingests bills → auto‑rename → parse header data (vendor, date, amount, invoice #) → attach to the right vendor/job.

• GL & job coding rulesLearn your patterns (vendor + line description → GL + tax + job). Block duplicates before they hit accounting.

• Approvals that run themselvesRoute by amount, category, and BU. Remind approvers automatically; escalate only when needed.

• Post & payPush clean bills into your accounting system; schedule payments with the method you already use.

Templated vs. custom: how we deliver

AP Starter Pack (Templated Assemblies)

• Document intake & auto‑classification

• Duplicate detection and vendor hygiene

• GL/job defaulting and exception queue

• Approval routing with reminders

Custom Add‑Ons (when you’re ready)

• 2‑/3‑way match (POs & receipts), partials, and change orders

• Multi‑entity rules (holding company / multi‑brand)

• Statement reconciliation and month‑end roll‑ups

Everything lives inside the stack you already run—ServiceTitan for operational context, your accounting platform for the ledger. No rip‑and‑replace; we wire the workflows in and let your team stay focused on the work that actually needs judgment.

The takeaway for ops leaders

• Hours back—every week. The busywork disappears; your team handles exceptions.

• Cleaner books, fewer “oops.” Rules catch duplicates and miscodes before they spread.

• Proof you can show. Bills/hour up, cycle time down, error rate down—metrics your CFO will love.

If you want a quick read on where you stand, send over last week’s bill count and average approval time. We’ll sketch a two‑week plan that turns your AP desk into a calm, predictable flow.