“DIY – New Web-based application lets vendors manage your accounts payable.”

Originally published in the March 2009 Issue of AFP Exchange. By Ira Apfel

A new Web-based program that debuted in late January is making it easier for vendors to enroll in a customer’s e-payments program. Travelex Global Business Payments touts Payee Manager, which went live Jan. 27, as the first system that lets vendors sign up, manage their account information, and make and receive payments online. The combination electronic payments and vendor management system takes the arduous task of maintaining a vendor’s account details away from a company’s accounts payable department and pushes it back to the vendor. Payee Manager also lets both vendor and corporate customer track payments via the Web. Corporate customers are notified any time the vendor changes account information to ensure security.

“In the past there was a lack of vendor management associated with making payments to suppliers,” said Adam Tiberi, Travelex Vice president of global product management. “Banks are good at making payments but what was missing was giving the vendor visibility and the ability to track payments and update information in the vendor management system.

“The benefits of Payee Manager are that it offers vendors a framework to move away from checks and pay electronically, and instead of making one-off checks they can minimize overhead in managing suppliers,” said Tiberi.

A former executive with Oracle, Tiberi said that traditional enterprise resource planning programs like the ones offered by his old employer were good for enrolling vendors. “But they had no functionality at all relating to payments or information,” he added. “How do you get their bank account details? They have to email or fax it.”

Payee Manager also can create and manage a marketing campaign to help companies enroll their vendors in the system. The marketing campaign can include telemarketing and letters to vendors, using the company’s corporate logo, explaining Payee Manager and how to enroll online.

As part of the marketing campaign, Payee Manager also can scrub a company’s vendor database for a fee to ensure the most accurate contact information and the highest response rate. “Payee Manager is targeted for companies with a large number of vendors and businesses that make a lot of one-off payments so they can send an email to their supplier,” Tiberi said. “It’s also for businesses making a lot of check payments. Payee Manager provides them with the technology to automate this part of their business.”

USER EXPERIENCE

TESSCO Technologies Inc. of Hunt Valley, Md., was one Payee Manager’s pilot customers and has been very pleased with how well the program works. “I was a little skeptical at the beginning, to be honest,” said James J. Smith, accounts payable analyst for TESSCO. “I’ve been doing accounts payable for nearly 20 years and I’d never seen anything like this. I was really surprised by it.

“We started with a few vendors to see how it worked and it was so good that we quickly rolled it out to every one of them,” Smith said. “The whole enrollment process takes vendors three minutes. There’s no cost to vendors to get on it. And there was not one security issue with it.”

Payee Manager is a win-win for TESSCO because it provides a no-cost solution for vendors who want to receive their payments quickly while reducing costs for the company. “We were on the old paper checks before,” Smith said. “Now we have 766 vendors in our file and we just incorporated it to bring our employees’ expense reports on file too.”

Smith said his company opted to use Payee Manager’s marketing campaign; 90 percent immediately enrolled. “We can send our vendors an email the day the payment was made,” Smith said. “Then they get a copy of the payment—EDI, PDF, whatever form of remittance file they want they can feed it right into accounts receivable so they can update their account the same day. It’s much quicker then sitting there waiting for a check.

“From our perspective, we can control when the money leaves our bank,” Smith said. “In these economic times it benefits us both to know when the cash is coming and going.”

Note: From time to time AFP presents information about new technologies that might be of interest to members. This information is researched independently by AFP staff and is never linked to any sponsorship arrangement with the company.