As the Payables Guy, I recommend reading about my journey, which begins with my experience at Workflow Solutions and continues with my work at Pivot Payables. This journey shaped me into a recognized expert in AP automation, B2B payments, and the networked business—expertise that I apply in the Payables Guy blog posts.You can follow me here as well on X at @payablesguy.

The Payables Guy journey continues at Pivot Payables. As Co-Founder and CPO, I lead the company in delivering innovative solutions for streamlining financial operations.A key part of Pivot's product strategy is helping financial executives maximize the value of their commercial card programs for spend and payment management across travel, purchasing, and invoice processes. One of the main challenges financial executives face is reconciling company-paid credit card statements.To… Show more The Payables Guy journey continues at Pivot Payables. As Co-Founder and CPO, I lead the company in delivering innovative solutions for streamlining financial operations.A key part of Pivot's product strategy is helping financial executives maximize the value of their commercial card programs for spend and payment management across travel, purchasing, and invoice processes. One of the main challenges financial executives face is reconciling company-paid credit card statements.To ensure accurate financial and managerial accounting, organizations must know the type of goods or services purchased for each transaction and assign the correct account code. This reconciliation process often takes dozens of hours each month to complete. Pivot developed PivotEQ, an innovative solution that automates this reconciliation process, reducing the time spent from hours to just minutes. PivotEQ uses our proprietary Smart Accounting™ technology to automatically assign the correct account codes.Pivot also helps Accounts Receivable (AR) and other departments generate reports that itemize expenses and include backup documentation images. For example, organizations that charge back expenses to clients, property locations, or equity funds need to provide detailed reports to the entities being charged. Manually creating these reports can take dozens of hours each month and is prone to errors, such as missing billable expenses. PivotPrime is an innovative solution that automates the creation of these reports, ensuring accuracy and saving time.Pivot recognizes the importance of the networked business in streamlining financial operations. A networked business leverages digital networks and technology to connect internal and external systems, creating a more efficient organization. Pivot solutions use our embedded integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS), branded PivotNexus, to seamlessly integrate financial operations with external systems connected to these processes. Show less

The Payables Guy journey continued at Concur, where due to my AP automation expertise I was recruited to launch their AP automation application, now branded SAP Concur Invoice. The headline was in addition to Concur Invoice I played key roles in designing and launching a series of innovative products including their B2B payment platform and their development platform.THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINEPrior to my arrival in January 2005, Concur had launched a check request application… Show more The Payables Guy journey continued at Concur, where due to my AP automation expertise I was recruited to launch their AP automation application, now branded SAP Concur Invoice. The headline was in addition to Concur Invoice I played key roles in designing and launching a series of innovative products including their B2B payment platform and their development platform.THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINEPrior to my arrival in January 2005, Concur had launched a check request application branded Concur Vendor Payments. They tasked me with evolving this application into a full-fledged AP invoice automation solution. I was the designer for the necessary functionality, including the Invoice Capture service, which leveraged my Fidesic experience using OCR technology to convert invoice images into digital invoices.After Concur acquired Outtask in 2006, they asked me to leverage my B2B payment experience to design and launch a B2B payment platform utilizing their payment technology. This platform has since become one of the most successful global B2B payment platforms.In my final role, I was a founding member of the team behind Concur's developer platform. I was the principal designer of the Concur Expense APIs and a key contributor to the Travel and Invoice APIs. A major focus of my design work was creating APIs targeted at integration developers, leveraging my expertise in designing iPaaS applications. Show less

The Payables Guy journey continued when Fidesic acquired Onrain to integrate it as their expense management service. I joined the executive team as Director of Product Management for this service. The key highlight was expanding my expertise in AP automation and B2B payments.THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINEFounded in 2001, Fidesic aimed to be the "PayPal for B2B payments", positioning itself as a B2B payment platform. Working with their team allowed me to significantly enhance my… Show more The Payables Guy journey continued when Fidesic acquired Onrain to integrate it as their expense management service. I joined the executive team as Director of Product Management for this service. The key highlight was expanding my expertise in AP automation and B2B payments.THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINEFounded in 2001, Fidesic aimed to be the "PayPal for B2B payments", positioning itself as a B2B payment platform. Working with their team allowed me to significantly enhance my expertise in B2B payments.Initially, Fidesic developed a SaaS AR automation application to drive payments through their platform. However, this approach didn't gain traction because Accounts Payable, not Accounts Receivable, decides the payment method for settling AP invoices. In 2003, Fidesic pivoted and launched a SaaS AP automation application to increase payment activity. Later that year, they acquired Onrain with the same goal of driving more payments to their platform.In May 2004, I became Director of Product Management for both the AP automation application and the expense management service. My work with the AP automation app further expanded my expertise, particularly in managing PO invoices. A key lesson from this experience was using OCR technology to convert invoice images into digital invoices, improving efficiency and accuracy in the AP process. Show less

The Payables Guy journey continued with the founding of Onrain, which Cher and I launched to advance the NetExpense idea. Onrain was a SaaS company focused on delivering on-demand employee spend management applications to small businesses.

The Payables Guy journey continued when I left Captura to position Cher and me to create a company to evolve the NetExpense idea. The headline from this chapter of my career was gaining experience in designing an integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS), which is central to the concept of the networked business.THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINEWhen Workflow Solutions merged with Captura, Cher and I signed non-compete agreements that prevented us from creating competitive… Show more The Payables Guy journey continued when I left Captura to position Cher and me to create a company to evolve the NetExpense idea. The headline from this chapter of my career was gaining experience in designing an integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS), which is central to the concept of the networked business.THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINEWhen Workflow Solutions merged with Captura, Cher and I signed non-compete agreements that prevented us from creating competitive applications for one year after leaving Captura.By late 2000, it was clear that Captura had abandoned the idea of marketing a SaaS solution for small and mid-sized businesses. Recognizing the potential, Cher and I decided to leave Captura and join iTango. Cher became VP of Marketing, and I took the role of Director of Product Management. iTango hired us to revamp their product strategy, as their existing application—a front-end for PeopleSoft—was struggling to gain traction.Cher proposed that iTango evolve into a SaaS benefits enrollment platform. As part of this strategy, I suggested moving from a one-to-one integration architecture (iTango) to (PeopleSoft) to a middleware architecture that would enable one-to-many integrations. This required the development of an integration platform.At Workflow Solutions, I had designed a precursor to an integration platform. At iTango, I expanded this concept into a fully-fledged integration platform. This experience improved my expertise in designing iPaaS applications, a critical component of modern networked businesses. Show less

The Payables Guy journey continued when Workflow Solutions merged with Captura Software in March 1998. The highlight of this period was increasing my expertise in AP automation and B2B payments by designing applications to streamline the NPO invoice process and to reimburse employees via ACH direct deposits.THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINEIn addition to TIME, Captura was particularly interested in NetExpense, leveraging its SaaS architecture to market to small and midsized… Show more The Payables Guy journey continued when Workflow Solutions merged with Captura Software in March 1998. The highlight of this period was increasing my expertise in AP automation and B2B payments by designing applications to streamline the NPO invoice process and to reimburse employees via ACH direct deposits.THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINEIn addition to TIME, Captura was particularly interested in NetExpense, leveraging its SaaS architecture to market to small and midsized businesses. The vision was for NetExpense to complement their flagship expense management app, Employee Payables, which was an on-premise solution targeted at large enterprises.However, this vision changed in July when Ford and General Motors signed on as the first customers for the web-based version of Employee Payables. Recognizing the significant technical challenges of the web application, I recommended to the CEO that we move the NetExpense development team to support the Employee Payables project. She agreed, and that marked the end of NetExpense.I was assigned to the “Ford Team” and regularly traveled to Dearborn to work with Ford executives, ensuring the success of the Employee Payables implementation. During one visit, the executive overseeing the project introduced me to the process for handling NPO invoices, noting its similarity to the employee payables process. He asked if Captura could create an AP automation application to streamline this process.Captura agreed, and I was tasked with designing the application. I met with key stakeholders in accounts payable, learning about the challenges they faced with NPO invoices, and used these insights to drive my design. This project began my expertise in AP automation.Separately, Captura assigned me to design an application to reimburse employees using ACH deposits. I learned about the NACHA process and designed my first B2B payment application, beginning my expertise in B2B payments. Show less

My journey to becoming the Payables Guy began with Workflow Solutions, where I gained essential expertise in Accounts Payable automation and ERP integration. The headline of my time at Workflow Solutions was leading the development of one of the first SaaS-based, on-demand business applications. This expense management service, marketed by Bank of America under the brand TIME, was offered through their commercial credit card division.THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINEFounded… Show more My journey to becoming the Payables Guy began with Workflow Solutions, where I gained essential expertise in Accounts Payable automation and ERP integration. The headline of my time at Workflow Solutions was leading the development of one of the first SaaS-based, on-demand business applications. This expense management service, marketed by Bank of America under the brand TIME, was offered through their commercial credit card division.THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINEFounded in January 1995, Workflow Solutions was the first of three software companies co-founded by me and my longtime business partner, Cher Pearsall. Our goal was to create workflow applications to leverage the growing adoption of Business Process Reengineering (BPR).Our first project was automating the expense reporting process. Boeing was our first client, hiring us to streamline their travel accounting process. This led to the development of our product, TAMS, which we marketed to large enterprises.One of these was United Technologies, who introduced us to Purchasing Cards (P-Cards). They wanted us to automate the procurement process for non-travel purchases made with P-Cards. Their goals were to collect accounting information for proper g/l booking and detect fraudulent purchases. We created the P-Card System, a workflow application marketed to businesses using P-Cards. One of these businesses was Zurich American Insurance, which used a Bank of America (BofA) P-Card. This caught the BofA's attention.BofA approached us with the idea of transforming our on-premise P-Card System into an internet-based service hosted in their Phoenix data center. This was a groundbreaking idea at the time, as Salesforce, widely recognized as the first true SaaS company, wasn't founded until 1999. We agreed and created TIME, which was the first SaaS expense management service. For businesses that weren't BofA customers Workflow Solutions marketed TIME as NetExpense. Show less