How MB2 Dental Solutions Scaled Accounts Payable for Microsoft Dynamics GP with Fidesic
Summary: MB2 Dental Solutions used Fidesic AP automation with Microsoft Dynamics GP and Binary Stream Multi-Entity Management (MEM) to grow from 80 to more than 500 dental locations in two years without hiring additional accounts payable clerks. Invoice processing time dropped from 10 days to 5 days and the system went live three weeks after MB2 chose Fidesic.
Key Results at a Glance
- Grew from 80 locations to more than 500 locations in two years
- Scaled AP to process 30,000 vendor invoices per month
- Cut invoice processing time from 10 days to 5 days
- Went live with automated invoice capture and approvals in three weeks
- Added zero Accounts Payable Clerks during the growth period
Introduction
Who Is MB2 Dental Solutions?
MB2 Dental Solutions is a fast-growing dental management and practice development company. Operating under a franchising model, MB2 provides services to its member practices so dentists can focus on patient care and spend less time on daily office management.
MB2 provides back office support to dental offices. Practices gain the benefits of partnering with a larger organization while keeping their independence.
Part of that service includes paying bills.
What AP Challenge Did MB2 Face?
As MB2 grew it needed a way to process thousands of monthly accounts payable invoices without adding overhead.
The company was using QuickBooks for accounting and Bill.com for accounts payable.
“We found that QuickBooks will only go so far before we would break it, even with just 80 entities,” said MB2 Controller Sarah Sawyer. “Each entity was its own company and running a report across all of them, QuickBooks would frequently crash. With Bill.com, we had to go in and sync everything individually to each company instead of doing one large sync."
MB2 grew to 250 locations within a year and to more than 500 within two years. To support that growth its accounts payable department needed to scale to 30,000 vendor invoices a month.
From 80 locations to 500 locations in just two years. Fidesic helped make it possible.
Part 1:
Why Did MB2 Move to Microsoft Dynamics GP and Binary Stream MEM?
With frequent timeouts and constant frustration in QuickBooks, MB2 began migrating to Microsoft Dynamics GP.
MB2 also implemented Binary Stream Multi-Entity Management to centralize accounting across all entities. The company needed an AP solution that would work seamlessly with both Dynamics GP and MEM.
Why Didn't Bill.com Work with Dynamics GP?
Bill.com lacked multi-entity functionality and a direct Dynamics GP integration. It required four file downloads per entity to upload into GP.
"We tried taking Bill.com over to GP but unfortunately, they wanted us to download 4 files per entity to upload into GP."
“We tried taking Bill.com over to GP but unfortunately, they wanted us to download 4 files per entity to upload into GP," said Sawyer. "At minimum, that would have been 400+ files to be downloaded a day. That was definitely not going to work for us.”
Sawyer and the Anchor Group determined that MB2 needed an AP automation solution built for Dynamics GP with seamless integration to both GP and Binary Stream MEM.
“Any extra work or manual data entry between these systems was a non-starter for us,” said Sawyer.
Bill.com lacked the multi-entity functionality and Dynamics GP integration capabilities they needed.
Part 2:
What Did MB2 Need in an AP Automation Solution?
MB2 needed four core capabilities in an AP automation solution for Microsoft Dynamics GP.
1. Integration:
Seamless integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP and Binary Stream MEM with no manual data entry between systems.
2. Data Capture:
An invoice capture system that could handle entity-based processing across hundreds of locations.
3. Location Based Approvals:
Approval workflows that route invoices by location or entity.
4. Multi-Account Pay Fulfillment:
Payment by ACH and paper check from multiple bank accounts directly to vendors with no third-party intermediary.
After comparing several solutions MB2 chose Fidesic because it met all four requirements.
"Fidesic literally saved our sanity. It is so much easier to use and integrates with our software."
“Fidesic and MEM have brought us into the 21st century. With MEM and Fidesic, it’s super fast,” said Sawyer. “The great thing about Binary Stream’s MEM is you can look at all your companies in one smart list, in one report. And then you can dig down into that if something doesn’t look right. Especially if I’m looking for an invoice that I know we’ve received but somehow wasn’t posted in the right entity, I can look across all entities and see where that invoice is. I can do a search.”
Conclusion:
What Results Did MB2 Get from Fidesic?
MB2 cut invoice processing time in half and doubled in size without adding AP staff. Fidesic addressed each of MB2's primary objectives without changing how the team uses the features built into Dynamics GP and MEM.
The easy-to-use Fidesic platform also gave MB2 Dental Solutions a smooth onboarding process.
“When you’re in growth mode, a lot of times you’re in panic mode, trying to get everything correct and get bills paid on time. Fidesic came in and really helped us with that,” said Sawyer.
“Fidesic literally saved our sanity. It is so much easier to use and integrates with our software,” she added. “It is web based and built on the Azure cloud so it can be used from anywhere, and we can give access to our member users who want to review their invoices and payments without emailing the AP department for help.”
Three weeks after MB2 chose Fidesic the company was automatically capturing invoice data, getting electronic approvals and pushing that data directly into Dynamics GP.
Since implementing Fidesic in 2020 MB2 has doubled in size to more than 500 locations without hiring Accounts Payable Clerks to process invoices.
“Having implemented Fidesic, we have been able to trim our invoice processing from 10 days to 5 days,” said Sawyer. “The automatic coding of invoices in the system has really helped improve efficiency as well."
