Inside Karmak 2025: The Four Moves That Make AP Run Smoother in Fusion

Karmak 2025 had the kind of buzz you hope for at a user conference. We spent a few days in sessions, roundtables, and side conversations where teams swapped success stories, compared notes on what they wanted to dig into, and fed off a packed agenda. 

What we heard across Fusion dealerships was familiar: teams are still very paper heavy, veteran AP professionals are retiring, growth is real, and headcount is tight. Across service, parts, and accounting, the same ask kept coming up: help us move faster with the team we have, with AI and automation doing more of the lifting inside Fusion. That lens shaped how we listened throughout the event. 

The most successful rooftops followed four simple strategies/moves. Keep more of the work inside Fusion, get the data right at intake, let policy drive approvals, and make every handoff follow the rules and leave a record. Do those four things and invoice-to-pay moves faster without creating audit noise. 

We didn’t try to cover the whole agenda. We focused on the moments that matter to controllers, AP managers, and CFOs who want month end to feel boring in the best way.  

Here are the highlights that stuck with us. 

1) Keep the Work Inside Fusion 

This theme came up again and again: everyone wants speed and efficiency without more tabs. In the AP roundtable and side conversations, the dealerships handling busy weeks had moved more of AP into Fusion and cut detours through email and side spreadsheets. We heard the same sentiment in different words: keep the work where people already work. 

A controller said it best: when everything lives in one place, a status check is a glance, not a scavenger hunt. You can see the invoice, where it’s routed, who touched it, and what’s next. Approvers aren’t hunting for links. AP isn’t pasting screenshots. Leaders get one story to trust. You could feel the room nod along in agreement. 

It also makes onboarding easier. New hires learn one system, not a patchwork of portals, which shortens ramp time and reduces handoffs that cause mistakes. 

And the integration keeps the invoice-to-pay process in one system with a single audit trail. Approvals stay in familiar routes, key details carry over automatically, and every step is recorded, so it’s easy to see who did what and when. Month end gets quieter because the work stays put. With smaller teams and steady growth, that consistency lets your team handle more volume without switching tools. 

2) Get the Data Right at Intake 

Paper is still everywhere. Dealer Jackets are thick, and invoices and vendor files sit in mixed folders. What stood out was how quickly relief shows up when dealerships make data capture accurate and searchable from day one. 

Smart Capture, onPhase’s AI data capture with human expertise, reads invoices, handles odd formats, and passes clean fields forward so the first approval is usually the only approval. You don’t notice a new tool; you notice fewer restarts, fewer exceptions, and a shorter queue by Thursday. That pattern came up in almost every AP conversation we joined. 

When documents and data tie back to Fusion, files stop going missing, routing gets predictable, and search becomes practical. Teams told us that pulling a record by vendor, PO, unit, or VIN cut search time in half because the packet travels with the work. It sounds small, but removing the search time frees up hours for reconciliations and vendor follow up. That’s why we keep saying “start clean.” 

Clean intake also reduces touches per invoice, so the same team can process more work without new headcount. It protects institutional knowledge too. When experienced AP professionals retire, accurate data and attached documents keep the story intact for whoever takes the seat next. We left convinced that good intake is the simplest way to add capacity without adding headcount. 

3) Let Policy Drive Approvals 

Sustainable speed comes from putting the rules in the system people already use. When hierarchies and thresholds live in Fusion, approvals move without side emails or detours. In our conversations with AP leaders, the basics kept winning: route by amount, branch, and role; send reminders on a schedule; and make status visible in Fusion so AP isn’t chasing updates. What clicked for us was how ordinary these settings are and how much time they save when teams actually use them. 

When the know-how lives in the workflow, not in one person’s head, retirements don’t break the process. When the know-how lives in the workflow, not in one person’s head, retirements don’t break the process. In practice, that means approvals run on policy inside Fusion, visibility is built in, and conversations shift from fixing errors to timing cash. We found ourselves repeating the same point in different rooms: policy in the system beats another training deck. 

The result is predictability. Month end is cleaner, and discount capture becomes intentional, not lucky. 

4) Make Every Handoff Follow the Rules and Leave a Record 

Security and leadership sessions kept pointing to the same soft spots: vendor changes made off to the side, one-off approvals, and gaps between systems. The fix wasn’t a new dashboard. It was a shorter process with handoffs that follow policy and show their work. We liked the simplicity of that; short paths with receipts. 

Two simple moves stood out: 

First, run vendor changes through a controlled route so bank and address updates follow the same approvals as everything else, with an auditable record. 

Second, let the onPhase + Fusion integration keep a clean history. It records each step, who did what and when, and flags anything that needs attention. With that in place, you can answer questions in minutes instead of running a scavenger hunt. 

Once exceptions are low and approvals flow in Fusion, payments are the last mile. Moving more volume through embedded payments brings cash visibility into the same system as the invoices that created it. Reconciliation gets simpler. Vendor conversations get clearer because everyone’s looking at the same record. And after-the-fact fixes drop, because the commitment and the payment share the same history. That’s the outcome that controllers care about. 

This matters in a paper-heavy world. When approvals and changes are captured in the system, controls don’t retire when people do. The rules stay visible, auditable, and easy to explain. 

So, do you integrate with Fusion? 

It was one of the first questions we heard from Karmak dealers, and it makes sense. 

onPhase integrates with Karmak Fusion which keeps capture, approvals, and payments in one system. Policy and routing run where people already work, and every step is recorded so status and history are clear. The result is simple visibility, easier adoption, and one system, one story. 

Where We Go From Here 

The path forward is clear: start with accurate capture, let policy drive approvals in Excede, keep integrations clean, and maintain one audit trail. When these pieces work together, month-end becomes predictable and controllers can trust the numbers. 

If you want to see how this works for your team, schedule some time with one of our automation experts today.