Payables Pain: Driven to Find a Better Way
Posted by Jarrod Levitan on Wed, Sep 10, 2008
This is our very first Blog post. Thought I'd kick it off with why Bean was founded.
Before starting this business I was the CFO of a medium sized business for 5 years. I spent a lot of time dealing first hand with processing bills in accounts payable. Many hours wasted in front of a copy machine and having a hard time finding invoices in filing cabinets that had taken control of our office space. Even worse the pain of pulling them from long term storage. Plus the time we spent doing data entry or fixing mistakes when we could have been doing something more important.
I thought to myself ‘there has to be a better way'. After some research I found that unless your company had a budget of hundreds of thousands and internal IT knowledge there was nothing out there to help automate your AP. Worse there was zero available to help with rebilling or compiling client reimbursables. And our company had tons.
It just seemed with all the technology out there this problem would have been solved by now. But it wasn't. The opportunity was clear as day. Create a system from start to finish that manages the AP process, makes it quicker, easier, add controls with immediate access to records like google. The benefits are obvious and vast. Cost savings being first, especially people's time. Then all the office costs like storage and copies. Then add up all the other benefits like improved accuracy, control, process management and less errors. Combined it all makes a strong value proposition.
Beanbills technology was created to focus on the combined strengths of people and technology. Ultimately, why are we still doing tasks computers can do better? There will always be a place for both so why not make the best of both. Use technology to rid ourselves of all those manual paper based problems, free up our office time for more valuable work.
And why the name Bean Services? There are so many boring systems and companies out there in accounting. We wanted to break the mold with something fresh, fun and friendly. So Bean was born.
