The restaurant industry is fast-paced and highly competitive. It is especially tricky when it comes to accounts payable. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Kitchen Table Restaurant Group found themselves facing an array of problems due to manual accounts payable. That's when they turned to Quadient AP by Beanworks.
"Quadient AP by Beanworks really transformed the way we look at finance. It's been a game changer." – Michael Hood, Procurement Manager, Kitchen Table Restaurant Group
Challenge
When Michael Hood, Procurement Manager for Kitchen Table Restaurant Group, joined the organization, he found that the company had a strong focus on expansion but was itself saddled with manual AP processes that consumed its time.
As with most organizations in the industry, they dealt with a high volume of invoices and frequent price fluctuation. With limited staff, it quickly became overwhelming.
"AP can be very monotonous and there is a lot to do," Hood said. "When I first started with the company, I was hand-printing every invoice that came through our inbox."
Hood stated that he sorted all of those invoices by hand. Reporting was handled by period rather than calendar month and was due every four weeks. Using manual AP, Hood indicated that it took his team two to three weeks just to get through the reporting process.
The first four hours of his day were typically reserved for printing invoices, which then had to be sorted into piles which quickly overwhelmed his desk. The information from the invoices then had to be manually input into QuickBooks, while simultaneously making sure all of the data matched.
"Every week, our restaurants would send in packages of all of their receipts and expense forms,” Hood said, “I’d come back from a long weekend and just want to cry because there’d just be piles on my desk."
Hood also stated that he spent a large amount of time tracking down owners to get their receipts for expenses. The workload became so excessive that he and his team couldn’t even focus on some of the bigger projects that the company had related to things like expansion because they were so inundated with work.
Another challenge faced by Hood's team was a lack of accountability and true partnership in the various platforms they utilized. They were unhappy with the lack of collaboration and help that they received and wanted to find a supplier who would provide them with a customer-centric solution.
The problems that Hood encountered are issues that he sees frequently in the restaurant industry, stating, "A lot of restaurant groups don't actually have a proper AP platform, and so they can’t actually progress further because they're always being stifled by the day-to-day."
Solution
Quadient AP by Beanworks allowed the organization to completely digitize its AP process, eliminating the need for physical storage such as filing cabinets. The centralized, cloud-based system provides quick access to their documents and data so that no more time is wasted filing paper or searching through the files to find the document that they need.
The Quadient AP mobile app provided the ability for restaurant managers and others to snap pictures of their receipts and expense documents, which were then automatically routed for approval, eliminating the need for sprawling piles of paper. All relevant data can be found live, as soon as it is uploaded.
Customizable workflows and filters allow documents to be directed to the relevant team member for review and approval, with regular reminders sent out until the invoice is paid.
Robust reporting capabilities and the ability to create reports based on their specific needs also allowed the team to quickly create relevant reports without having to sort through numerous documents to gather the appropriate data.
Quadient AP's customer success managers and team also helped Kitchen Table Restaurant Group, not only with the onboarding process but by continuing to provide support and answer questions on an ongoing basis so that the company could optimize its AP performance.
Results
The reporting process, which once took roughly three weeks, is now accomplished in three days. Because everything is now digital, the company has been able to get rid of all of its filing cabinets, and the first four hours of the day are no longer spent printing invoices. In addition, features such as line-item capture and optical character recognition provide them with 99% touchless invoicing, eliminating the need to manually enter data into solutions like QuickBooks.
In addition, the app allows managers and owners to immediately share their receipts and expense documents, meaning that Hood and his team no longer must wade through piles of paperwork to complete approvals.
This extra time has allowed Hood to focus on procurement, as well as the organization's expansion efforts.
"Before Quadient AP by Beanworks, I couldn’t even get to the major projects I had because I was so inundated with monotonous AP tasks," Hood said. "We have thirteen properties and will be adding another 10 next year, and that would not be possible if I was stuck managing manual payables still."
