The 90-Day AP Stack Checkup Every Multi-Rooftop Dealer Should Run

If you run AP for a multi-rooftop dealership group, you don’t need another “transformation” story. You need a plan that fits between month-end, staffing gaps, and the next surprise from your OEM or lender.

Right now, the pressure is real. Heavy truck and commercial markets are moving, but not in a straight line. Recent coverage from Reuters shows major truck manufacturers calling the environment “challenging,” with softer orders and tighter margins that roll straight downhill to dealers.

When sales are choppy, fixed ops and parts carry even more of the profit load. At the same time, your AP stack is spread across DMS exports, spreadsheets, email approvals, bank portals, and the “we have always done it that way” processes at each rooftop. The work still gets done, but it takes more time, more people, and more patience than it should.

The good news is you don’t have to rebuild everything to get control back. In about 90 days, you can tune up the stack you already have so invoices move faster, payment risk drops, and everyone from parts to the controller has a clearer view of what is coming.

Why your AP stack needs a tune-up now

Most dealership finance teams are not short on systems. You have a DMS at the center, OEM portals, and bank platforms, to name a few. Maybe a document imaging tool, an AP point solution, or both. The real issue is how all of those pieces fit together, especially across locations.

That shows up in very familiar ways:

• Invoices live in inboxes and local folders until someone has time to key them.
• Approvals bounce between email threads with no clear owner.
• Different rooftops use different coding habits for the same vendors.
• Vendor calls and “where is my money” emails land on your AP team before you even see the problem.

It’s not just ineffective. It’s expensive.

Industry benchmarks consistently place manual invoice processing costs between $5 and $15 per invoice, factoring in labor, errors, and rework.

For a multi-rooftop group processing tens of thousands of invoices a month, that manual load is real money. It also creates more opportunity for mistakes. The 2025 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey found that 79 percent of organizations experienced payments fraud in 2024, a sharp increase from the prior year.

When approvals, vendor changes, and exceptions are scattered across email and paper, it becomes much harder to see unusual patterns before they turn into real problems.

That is why a 90-day AP stack tune-up matters. You’re not just chasing efficiency. You’re tightening the control layer around your DMS so controllers, AP leaders, and operations all see the same story.

What “good” looks like for a dealership AP stack

Without a clear target, any fix is just a guess. Here's what a healthy AP stack actually looks like for a multi-rooftop group.

Across finance teams that have moved away from paper, email approvals, and manual keying, the pattern is consistent. They spend less time chasing status, see fewer surprises at close, and catch issues earlier instead of after the fact. In a multi-rooftop dealership, that kind of control is what separates “we made it through month end” from “we know exactly what is coming next.”

In a multi-rooftop dealership context, a healthy AP stack usually shares a few traits:

• Invoices follow one visible path from capture to approval to payment, regardless of which rooftop they start in.
• Approvals are rule driven, with clear thresholds, routing, and audit history.
• Duplicate and out of policy spend is harder to hide, because patterns and exceptions are visible in one place.
• Controllers, AP, and operations leaders see the same data, so conversations about margin, cash, and inventory are grounded in facts, not guesswork.

You do not get there by flipping a single switch. You get there with a sequence of practical moves that fit inside a quarter. That is where the 90-day tune-up comes in.

Phase 1: Diagnose – Weeks 1 to 3

The first step is not buying new tools. It’s understanding how invoices actually move today. You’re documenting the current state so you can see what should change, not to lock it in.

Spend the first few weeks getting a clear picture:

1. Map the real workflow across a few locations

Pick two or three representative rooftops. Follow a parts or service invoice from the moment it arrives to the moment it is paid.

• Where does it land first?
• When does it leave the DMS and move into email or spreadsheets?
• How many people touch it before it hits the bank?

Document the real path, not the one in the policy binder.

2. Quantify the friction

You don’t need perfect data. Start with directional numbers:

• Average days from invoice receipt to approval.
• Average days from approval to payment run.
• Number of invoices that hit late fees in a typical month.
• Volume of “manual exceptions” that need extra work.

You can use a simple estimate like:

Number of invoices per month x average minutes of manual handling = monthly AP time spent on invoice movement.

It will not be precise, but it will help you explain the problem to leadership in concrete terms.

3. Listen to the front line

Talk to AP specialists, parts managers, and operations leaders. Ask them where things routinely stall. Also ask what a better, “ideal” version of the process would look like from their seat.

You will hear patterns like:

• “I never know what’s waiting on my approval until someone pings me.”
• “I can’t see if the other location already paid this vendor.”
• “We key the same information three times in three systems.”

By the end of Phase 1, you want a one-page view of your current stack: the systems in play, the manual bridges between them, and the top two or three bottlenecks that show up across rooftops. That becomes the foundation for designing a future-state process, not just automating today’s workarounds.

Phase 2: Design – Weeks 4 to 6

Now you know where the stack is slowing you down. Phase 2 is about designing a better version that still fits your real world. This is the point where you stop copying old habits into new tools and start defining the process you actually want to scale over the next few years.

1. Define what “standard” looks like

For the workflows you care about first, align on:

• Who should approve what, at which dollar thresholds.
• How purchase orders and invoices should be coded for key vendors.
• What information needs to be visible across locations.

Keep it practical. You’re not trying to standardize every edge case. You’re building a repeatable core pattern that covers most scenarios.

Bring AP, parts, service, and operations leaders into these conversations early. When the people doing the work help design the new flow, the change feels like something they’re building with you, not something dropped on them.

2. Choose integration-first tools and partners

If your current stack is mostly spreadsheets and email, this is the point to introduce more structure.

Look for a comprehensive AP platform that:

• Integrates cleanly with your DMS and GL.
• Supports intelligent capture technology so invoices are read automatically and don’t require full manual keying.
• Offers configurable workflows so approvals route based on department, rooftop, and amount.
• Includes payments in the same flow, so you have one view of what is pending and what is paid.

The goal isn’t one more portal that your team has to remember to check. The goal is a connected control layer that sits between your DMS and the bank.

3. Set success metrics up front

Pick a small set of metrics you’ll watch during the pilot:

• Days from invoice receipt to approval.
• Number of invoices incurring late fees.
• Percentage of invoices that flow through without manual rekeying.
• AP hours per thousand invoices.

That way, when you get to the end of the 90 days, you can show whether the tune-up is working. Sharing these target metrics with the team also helps with change management, because everyone can see what “better” looks like and how progress will be measured.

Phase 3: Pilot – Weeks 7 to 10

This is where design meets reality.

1. Start with one or two high-impact lanes

You don’t need to automate every workflow at once. Start with:

• High-volume vendors that touch most rooftops, or
• A specific class of spend, like parts invoices from a key supplier.

Roll the new process out in a subset of locations and keep the pilot tight enough that you can watch it closely.

2. Lean on human-assisted intelligence

This is where intelligent capture technology and human review are powerful together.

• AI reads invoice data and matches it to vendor records.
• Rules route invoices to the right approvers based on location, amount, and type.
• A human review layer steps in when something doesn’t look right, so bad data does not flow through the stack.

You stay in control. AI handles the repetitive keying and routing; your finance team handles the judgment calls.

3. Capture stories as well as stats

During the pilot, track both numbers and quotes.

• “I went from spending an hour a day chasing approvals to five minutes.”
• “I can see which invoices are stuck without calling three people.”
• “Our week before month-end actually feels manageable now.”

These stories will help you sell the next phase inside the organization. The goal is to understand how work really gets done so you and your team can improve it together.

Phase 4: Scale – Weeks 11 to 13

If the pilot delivers, the last phase is about rolling the pattern out without losing the discipline you just built.

1. Extend successful workflows to more locations

Add rooftops in waves, using the same approval rules and coding patterns you refined in the pilot. Give each new location a clear checklist:

• How invoices are captured.
• How to submit and approve POs.
• Where to go to see status.

Build in space for feedback from each wave so you can adjust training, rules, or messaging before rolling the process farther. Treat that feedback as part of the tune-up, not as resistance.

2. Establish a simple “stack health” review

Once a month, review a short scorecard:

• Cycle time by vendor and location.
• Number of invoices with late fees.
• Exceptions that needed manual intervention.
• Open items that are aging past your target.

You’re not trying to add more meetings. You’re creating one consistent place to talk about AP performance with data, not anecdotes.

3. Lock in the wins

Use early results to fund and justify the next steps. Savings from fewer late fees, better discount capture, and reduced manual hours can support further rollout and refinement.

Celebrate those wins publicly and call out the teams that helped fix the process. That kind of recognition turns the 90-day project into a cultural shift toward continuous improvement, instead of a one-time clean-up.

Over time, this 90-day tune-up becomes the baseline for how you manage AP, not a one-off project.

Where onPhase fits in

Throughout this plan, the theme is the same: connect what you already have, instead of adding more tech.

That is exactly the role onPhase is built to play for dealership finance teams:

• Smart Capture to pull invoice data in without manual keying.
• Configurable workflows to standardize approvals across rooftops while respecting how fixed ops and accounting actually work.
• Integrated payments so you can move from “just push it through” to a more strategic view of cash and vendor relationships.
• Deep DMS and GL integrations so controllers, AP managers, and operations leaders are all looking at the same numbers.

Ninety days from now, your AP stack can look very different. Not because you ripped out your DMS or launched a massive transformation project, but because you took a hard look at how work really moves and redesigned it to scale.

Map what’s happening today. Decide what should change. Bring your team into the conversation early. Then build a process that supports margin, cash visibility, and cleaner data across every rooftop.

When you’re ready to see what that looks like in action with your DMS and your rooftops, onPhase can walk you through the stack you have today and help you design the one you actually want.