As a leading 3PL, Smart Warehousing partners with a multitude of vendors across 32 fulfillment locations nationwide. For Accounts Payable Supervisor Sheila Fierros and her two direct reports, operating at this scale translates to a highly complex payables workflow - and a lot of invoices to process.
Handling invoices from Smart Warehousing’s staffing agency partners was an especially tall order, with Sheila’s team processing 60-80 a week, all arriving in dramatically different formats. This meant that before issuing payments, the team had to search each one line by line for a worker’s shift details and verify accuracy. They then had to re-key everything into Smart Warehousing’s AP automation platform, Medius.
To meet agency deadlines and ensure workers were correctly compensated on paydays, Sheila’s team spent 10 hours a week on these invoices alone. That pressure only intensified around month-end close, when agency invoices collided with every other vendor invoice in need of processing during the same tight, three-day window. “We usually did the job on time and accurately, but sometimes we got stuck in rework,” Sheila explains. “The crunch was very stressful.”
With Smart Warehousing’s peak season for contract labor approaching and workflow friction only intensifying, Sheila knew she needed help fast. She had just begun requesting additional AP headcount when her director recommended Lido. As soon as she watched the demo and saw how the platform could automatically process any document layout without reconfiguration, she was sold.
The partnership began with what Sheila calls a “painless and easy” onboarding. During this phase, the Lido team walked her through the full extraction workflow, and two days later, Lido was live.
Today, processing agency invoices takes just 3 hours a week, even during peak season. Once Sheila’s team sets the extraction rules for each agency, they simply upload a batch of invoices, and Lido pulls each worker’s hours and shift information, flagging any mismatches or missing records for review. The platform then organizes all the information into an accurate, ready-to-use spreadsheet that the team uploads right to Medius for timely payouts, no rework necessary.
Even better, because agency invoices are managed so efficiently during weekly pay cycles, the team achieves their target 3-day close without the usual last-minute stress. They’ve even reclaimed time for higher-value work like bank and vendor statement reconciliations and payment disbursements, all while remaining a lean, three-person operation.
And the adoption is spreading. Transportation now uses Lido to seamlessly process shipping documents, such as bills of lading and proofs of delivery, and finance relies on it to consolidate invoice data and prepare financial accruals. What began as a solution to unblock Sheila’s AP team has since evolved into an adaptable system that saves time and automates repetitive work across the Smart Warehousing organization.
With Lido, Smart Warehousing turned invoice processing from a persistent bottleneck into a smooth, streamlined workflow. The small but mighty AP team now effortlessly processes an incredible volume of agency invoices without needing additional headcount.
The impact since the partnership began:
Sheila’s just getting started with Lido. Next up, she’s eager to test how the platform handles the range of invoice formats her team receives from equipment and inventory vendors. Her end goal is to have Lido automate as much document processing as possible.
