Overview
Thompson Truck & Trailer* operated across five locations, and AP had to keep pace with a high-volume dealership environment. Invoice flow moved fast, approvals could bottleneck quickly, and month-end deadlines did not leave room for backlogs.
Ashley Felts served as the AP Specialist and handled 2,500 to 3,000 invoices a month as a one-person team. Before automation, AP lived in email threads and paper: invoices and supporting docs were printed, sorted by location and department, routed for approval, then tracked manually to avoid duplicates and keep things moving.
When Ashley was unexpectedly out of the office for two and a half weeks, the risk became impossible to ignore. Her Controller stepped in and felt the chaos firsthand. Hours went to tracking down approvals, retracing email threads, and proving what had already been sent. That was the breaking point. The process could be taught, but it was held together by tribal knowledge and constant follow-up. They realized the entire AP workflow was one person away from breaking down.
Thompson Truck & Trailer wanted visibility, consistency, and a workflow that could keep up with the pace of the dealership. They chose onPhase to bring structure to AP and integrate cleanly with Procede.
The Problem
Before onPhase, AP ran on paper, persistence, and a lot of follow-up.
Every day, Ashley worked through 100 to 200 printed pages, sorting stacks, routing invoices for approval, and keeping a clean record of what had been sent, what was still waiting, and what had already been entered.
To create visibility and defend invoice status when questions came up, Ashley built her own accountability system in Excel. It helped push approvals forward, but it did not fix the core issue: proof and status were scattered across emails, paper, and memory.
Tracking an invoice was not a quick lookup. It meant searching inboxes, checking paper, and retracing steps to prove what happened and who still needed to act. The work was not complex, but it was consuming.
That created real pressure and risk:
- Month-end regularly turned into nights and weekends
- Tracking invoice status meant digging through email, paper, and filing cabinets
- The entire process ran on tribal knowledge, with one person managing intake, routing, tracking, and entry
When Ashley was unexpectedly out, the dealership felt that fragility firsthand. It could be explained, but it wasn't resilient.
onPhase's Impact
After rolling out onPhase, Thompson Truck & Trailer moved AP into a centralized workflow where invoice status and approvals were visible in one place.
The biggest change was simple: weekend work stopped being part of the job. Statement processing that once consumed one to one and a half weeks every other month shifted into a monthly routine completed in one to two days. Automation created breathing room for statement reconciliation because approvals and invoice status were no longer a scavenger hunt.
They brought about 80% of invoice volume into the workflow first, then expanded as they identified exceptions and unique invoice types, so operations stayed steady while the process matured.
Distribution runs dropped from about eight hours to about four. Managers had clearer visibility into whether invoices were approved and paid in one system, and approvals became manageable through small daily habits. The implementation was practical, not rushed. Instead of dedicating a full day each week to paper bundles, managers spent about 15 minutes per day in onPhase to keep approvals moving.
Paper storage shrank as well. With invoices and documentation centralized, year-end paper storage dropped from more than 35 boxes to about 6, and invoice retrieval no longer meant digging through banker boxes or inbox threads.
For Thompson Truck & Trailer, the outcome was straightforward: less chaos, more control, and a process that did not depend on one person holding it all together.
* Thompson Truck & Trailer was acquired by Ascendance Truck Centers in February 2025.
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