Exec summary

GPS Dental is known for providing tailored, innovative support services that help dental practices thrive and stay focused on patient care. Yet, they continued to manage accounts payable for a growing number of locations through a combination of manual processes and disconnected systems. The AP team was bogged down by manual work, visibility was limited, and workflows became increasingly difficult to scale as the company grew and added new practices. 

Today, GPS Dental manages its AP and payment processes through Ottimate. Consolidating the process into a single, connected platform has helped GPS Dental reduce manual work and paper checks, accelerate invoice processing and payments, improve visibility, and support a growing number of locations with the same headcount. To date, GPS Dental has saved 9,000+ hours in invoice processing and an estimated $120k in costs.

About GPS Dental

GPS Dental, a leading dental support organization (DSO), knows firsthand what it takes to operate a successful dental practice. Founded by two dentists in 2015, the Jonesboro, Arkansas-based company now supports 113 practices across 28 states. GPS Dental provides its partners with centralized non-clinical services, including accounting, payroll, marketing, and human resources, so they can stay focused on delivering outstanding patient care and growing their practices.

How GPS Dental managed accounts payable before Ottimate

GPS Dental has built a reputation for providing tailored nonclinical support that helps dental practices thrive. As the company expanded to more locations, its AP processes couldn’t keep up. 

Before Ottimate, the team relied on a combination of Smartsheet workflows, Google files, physical checks, and disconnected payment platforms. Invoices arrived at individual locations and were submitted to the central AP team through Smartsheet. From there, the team manually processed each invoice and cut and mailed physical checks. 

“We were printing upwards of four to five hundred checks per week here in the office,” Katlyn Allred, Controller at GPS Dental, explained. 

Over time, the company added a physical card solution to the mix. But instead of simplifying the process, it only added more complexity. Invoice processing and payments were managed through separate systems, which left the team buried in manual work, system handoffs, and data reconciliation, with limited visibility into the overall AP process. 

As GPS Dental continued to grow, it became clear that they needed a more connected system to support a large, multi-entity DSO without adding additional manual work or complexity.  

“We wanted a solution that would allow us to have everything in one platform,” Allred said.

Why GPS Dental chose Ottimate for multi-entity AP

Two years ago, the GPS Dental team began its search for a connected accounts payable platform. After evaluating several options, the company chose Ottimate, influenced by factors including usability, scalability, and a proven ability to manage AP across a growing number of dental practices. 

“We are one team that performs payable functions for 113 locations,” said Allred. “A lot of software reps say they can deal with multi-entity, but Ottimate has shown they can actually handle it.”

After the initial training, GPS Dental rolled out Ottimate in phases, starting with 6 practices and adding more each month until all locations were onboarded. Throughout the implementation, Ottimate worked closely with GPS Dental to configure workflows, get users up to speed, and transition vendors to more efficient payment methods.

“I always brag about how well the support team from Ottimate gets back to us in a timely manner, and they’re always very helpful,” Mallory White, Accounts Payable Assistant, said. “With other software we’ve used, the support isn’t there,” added Allred. “That’s not the case with Ottimate.”

Today, Ottimate serves as GPS Dental’s centralized AP and payments automation platform. Rather than juggling manual processes and fragmented systems, the team can now manage all invoices, approvals, payments, and transaction tracking through a single, unified system. This shift has increased efficiency, reduced manual work, and provided greater visibility and control over the entire AP process.

“So far, it’s worked great,” Allred said. 

Ottimate’s multi-entity capabilities have been particularly valuable to a lean AP team supporting over 100 practices. Administrative tasks such as setting up new users and onboarding new offices, which were once tedious and time-consuming, can now be tackled in just a few clicks. 

“If we hire someone, we can add 113 offices to that user with just a click to select all,” Allred explained. “With other software, we’d have to go through 113 different portals to do that.” 

GPS Dental has also come to rely on Ottimate’s VendorPay, Ottimate’s vendor payment capability, which moves suppliers from paper checks to ACH and virtual credit cards, capabilities that have enabled it to shift a growing number of vendors from paper checks to more efficient payment methods, such as ACH and virtual credit cards. This shift speeds up payments, improves tracking, and reduces vendor inquiries about delayed checks.

GPS Dental replaced Bill.com’s Divvy cards with Ottimate’s VendorPay in order to run invoice processing and vendor payments through a single system rather than two.

“We previously had a similar solution that we had used through Bill.com’s Divvy cards,” Allred said. “We did our payment methods, our AP, through Ottimate, so we wanted to switch over to one system. 

More recently, the team has started using Ottimate’s card-on-file feature, which enables them to store virtual card details with vendors for recurring expenses. 

“It’s frictionless,” Allred explained. “If we get the invoice in, it matches, and then it exports just like the vCards and ACHs we were used to through Ottimate. It’s helping us get rid of that second software we were using, and it’s really helped us be more efficient.”

GPS Dental’s results: 9,000+ hours saved and 70% fewer paper checks

Rolling out Ottimate has enabled GPS Dental to transform a fragmented, manual AP process into a streamlined workflow that can scale to support ongoing growth and expansion. 

One of the first things the team noticed was the reduction in paper checks. While check-based payments were once the default, growing ACH and virtual card adoption through VendorPay have dramatically reduced the number of checks the team cuts. 

“I think we’re maybe issuing four to five hundred checks a month now in Ottimate,” Allred said. “Before Ottimate, we were issuing that in-house in a week.”

The growing shift to electronic payments has improved payment speed and visibility of payment status. Vendors get paid faster, the AP team can track payments in real time through Ottimate, and they spend much less time chasing down status updates. 

“We used to get so many calls from vendors asking where their payment was,” Allred said. “That has drastically decreased because we can track when a vCard, ACH, or check payment was sent and delivered.” 

Consolidating AP into a single platform has also improved visibility and bolstered control. The team can quickly flag duplicate payments, verify transactions, and ensure invoices are properly approved before export. 

“It’s helpful that we can see all of the transactions,” White said. 

By modernizing and centralizing AP, GPS Dental’s lean team can continue to support a growing number of dental practices without adding headcount or compromising quality or control. 

“It has allowed us to be efficient and scalable and be able to function with this many offices with the same amount of team members as we did with fewer offices,” Allred said.

Thanks to greater efficiency and less administrative burden, the AP team now has more time to focus on strategic initiatives that support growth. “It’s given us time to work on the small back-burner things that could never get done before,” White explained. 

Allred agrees. “Before, it was just ‘get everything paid.’ Now we can focus on building efficient processes that actually scale,” she said. “So much has been taken off our plate with Ottimate.”