3-store dealership group Pillar streamlines accounts payable with software

Shifting what had been a more traditional system of accounts payable recordkeeping and review to a software-based process helped a small Ohio and Pennsylvania dealership group streamline accounting staff and strengthen oversight, according to its CFO.

Pillar Automotive had accounting inefficiencies before the group adopted software from accounts payable and direct pay provider technology company Stampli in 2022, according to Pillar partner and CFO Edward Williams. He joined the group from a certified public accounting firm in January 2020.

Situations would arise at Pillar where a check would be signed for an expense, yet nobody remembered approving it, Williams said. Employees with questions about a bill would have to pull physical invoices to review a vendor's history with a store.

Incorporating Stampli software into the store's operations solved such issues, he said.

"It's really been hugely beneficial for us," Williams said.

Incoming digital invoices from vendors are submitted to an email account feeding directly into the Stampli software, and mailed and faxed invoices are scanned and uploaded into the system, Williams said. The technology routes it to a department manager for approval, moving it up the chain of command until it reaches him for his approval as CFO. Managers with questions about a bill ask subordinates within the system through a messaging feature. When a charge is approved, Stampli will automatically send a record to Dealertrack.

In the past, Williams might have traveled to one of the group's three stores to sign checks. If he had a question about an invoice, he would have to wait for a manager to research the expense, he said. Now, a check that reaches him has already passed through the digital approvals processes and been OK'd by managers. The software has his signature on file and can sign checks and issue payments digitally following Williams' approval of the invoice. In the past, he was manually signing paper checks to be mailed to the recipient.

"I think last night at 10 o'clock, I signed like 17 checks," he said during a February interview. The software "just makes it very seamless."

Vendor records are contained in the system, which means an employee with a question about a bill can immediately and digitally review that vendor's history with the store.

"It's all at your fingertips," Williams said.

Through artificial intelligence, Stampli can learn about companies whose records it sees frequently and use that knowledge to prepopulate fields such as general ledger account numbers and invoice dates. Stampli also will flag the group about a vendor it hasn't seen before and help establish the system for approving those expenses. In the past, a staffer with an invoice from an unfamiliar company might not remember if it was a new or existing vendor, Williams said.

Pillar is a "resource-constrained dealer group," Williams said. It has three small dealerships with about 20 to 30 employees at each store. The efficiency generated by Stampli has allowed Pillar to operate with two-person accounting departments at each store instead of the previous three or four employees.

"It's allowed us to be superefficient," he said.

Having to pay two salaries instead of three or four means "I can pay two people very, very well," Williams said.

In February, he estimated his smaller accounting workforce was making about 80 percent of the salary pool that had been spread out among the previous staffing level.

In addition, the group is saving on benefits expenses for the positions it shed, he said.

This switch also means fewer entry-level positions, which Williams said he learned during the COVID-19 pandemic "are very difficult to fill" with employees possessing the necessary knowledge or ability. Higher-paid employees also have fewer attendance issues and produce "less drama" within the dealership, Williams said. "You get a better quality of a person," he said.

The group is saving more money than it's spending on the software, Williams said. The Stampli system also has saved the group from paying expenses it shouldn't, he said.

Pillar's new process has helped the group catch and address innocuous accounts payable mistakes, straightening things out with a vendor who billed for something the store hadn't received, Williams said.

It's also prevented the store from paying on fictitious invoices from "bad actors" the way it had in the past, he said.

"We're catching them now," Williams said. "We paid those prior to Stampli."

Williams said he wouldn't call it a 100 percent success rate, but "we're doing a much better job" of reviewing invoices for legitimacy.

Integrating Stampli into store operations took about 60 to 90 days, Williams said.

"You get initial resistance," he said.

At first, department heads called the software too cumbersome, he said. But then they realized the control it provides over their departments.

As Williams said he recognized before adopting Stampli, "If I'm a department manager and I'm paid off the net [income], don't you think I want to look at all the bills?"

In addition, the system automates tasks the managers used to have to do.

"After 30 days, people love it," he said.