American Liberty Hospitality Leveraging AI for Enhanced End-to-End Hotel AP Automation
by The Ottimate Editorial Team
Through a new integration partnership between Aptech’s PVNG accounting solution and Ottimate’s AP automation AI (formerly PlateIQ), hotel accounting teams can eliminate human error of manual entry and save considerable time processing invoices
To give hotel AP managers, approvers, controllers and CFOs better tools to work through the invoice lifecycle, Aptech has entered into an integration partnership with Ottimate (formerly PlateIQ), a company providing AP automation via AI. Together, Aptech and Ottimate are giving time back to accounting teams by enabling them to upload paper and electronic invoices in bulk and eliminate 90% of vendor invoice processing. Houston-based American Liberty Hospitality is one of the first hotel management and development companies to leverage the joint technology.
This Acumatica-specific solution matches purchase orders with 2 and 3-way capabilities, captures header and line item details with 99% accuracy, and allows customers to instantly map invoices by any dimension in Acumatica without the hassle of manual data entry. Ottimate’s revolutionary release supports the company’s ultimate goal of providing its time-saving AP automation solution to new industries, no matter how simple or complex their needs.
“Today with Aptech and Ottimate we are reducing the time it takes to process vendor paperwork, obtain the necessary approvals, and effect payment,” said Charles Poirier, American Liberty Hospitality Chief Financial Officer. “The API integration between Aptech’s PVNG enterprise accounting platform and Ottimate has made that a reality, and without a high degree of difficulty in implementation.
“The intuitiveness of Ottimate has greatly benefited both our properties and corporate office,” Poirier said. “The OCR and AI learning aspect of invoice upload has greatly reduced the time required for property side AP activity, and the speed of the cloud-based platform is far superior to our previous system. Ultimately, we intend to use the Vendor Pay section of the system to reduce the workload on the corporate AP team. We expect this technology to simplify our AP processes throughout the organization and allow us to scale with much less difficulty on the AP and payments side of our business.”
With Aptech + Ottimate, hotel accounting teams receive:
- Invoice Automation: Capture and process invoices, reducing manual data entry and errors.
- Expense Tracking: Gain real-time visibility into expenses to make informed financial decisions.
- Streamlined Approval Workflow: Customize approval workflows to fit unique business processes.
- Vendor Management: Easily manage vendor relationships and negotiate better terms.
AI Automation
Ottimate captures data down to the line item with 99.97% accuracy and pushes the information to PVNG. The solution leverages in-house built AI and machine learning to code invoices to the GL within PVNG. Translating information based on historical data with machine learning and AI enables accountants to auto code specific line items, such as tomatoes, to the GL account.
“Ottimate is learning a hotel’s AP processes and eliminating human error from manual data processing,” Wallach said. “The technology is continuously learning how each hotel processes invoices and enters the data accordingly. It’s an irreplaceable time-saving tool.”
Best-In-Class AP
PVNG – named among the “Best Finance & Accounting Software” of 2024 by Hotel Tech Report – features Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger, Statistics, Financials, Bank Reconciliation, automated invoice processing, a myriad of payment options, and drill-down capabilities in financial statements and reports. It is the first hotel accounting solution to connect to the Plaid Data Network. It can handle single or multi-property accounting and can be deployed as a hosted service.
“Aptech and Ottimate are providing a seamless and efficient solution for hotels seeking best-in-class AP automation,” said Jill Wilder, Aptech President. “This integration partnership signifies a shared commitment to giving hotels end-to-end AP automation for a better day to day. By leveraging the strengths and expertise of both companies, this collaboration will help hotel accounting departments thrive. Through innovative solutions and a customer-centric AP approach, Aptech and Ottimate are making financial processing more streamlined and efficient.”
American Liberty Hospitality’s Poirier said he is thankful for the tech alliance.
“Improving productivity while staying cost competitive is a constant need for hotel operators,” Poirier said. “We appreciate the collaboration of these software providers and encourage both to continue to pursue other such improvements for their customers.”
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