Synapse Enhance Their MYOB Acumatica Integration with AP Automation

Synapse is Australia's leading brain injury organisation, offering a wide range of specialist support, research activities, and services to enhance quality of life.

Established in 1984, Synapse has achieved remarkable growth. Starting in Queensland, they rapidly expanded their services nationally through partnerships and mergers and now have multiple offices across Australia.

To support the business' growing financial needs, Synapse implemented Accounts Payable Automation Software, which saved the finance team 40 hours a month and provided more reliable data.

MYOB Acumatica

accountancy software

250

docs/mo.

Sharlene Roach

Finance Manager

The Challenge

A Look Back at the Accounts Payable Challenges

Before the implementation, Synapse faced many of the same challenges that others in the Not-For-Profit industry face: inaccurate data, poor spending visibility, and difficulty verifying prices.

As the Finance Manager, Sharlene Roach is trained in financial operations and accountancy and leads the Synapse finance team of 4 members.

Even with many financial tasks to manage, the team spent much time and effort following up on invoice approvals. Delayed approvals resulted in the slow authorisation of payments. Without an automated system in place, these delays became a recurring issue.

The Solution

Lightyear's Invoice Automation Solution

The slow, manual accounts payable process left Synapse looking for a solution to suit their business model and integrate with their current accounting software MYOB Acumatica. The team wanted an AP system that would automate their accounts payable process while ensuring ease of use.

Synapse chose Lightyear’s AP automation solution as it ticked all these boxes. Lightyear has many features that make AP automation smooth for an NFP business like Synapse. This includes line-item data extraction, which works across all suppliers’ invoices, credit notes, statements, and receipts.

Additionally, Lightyear’s automatic price checker notifies users when a billed price differs from the agreed product price, helping the team improve accuracy and minimise errors.

Support Hub for Cost & Time Savings

The integration between Lightyear and MYOB Acumatica allowed the Synapse team to seamlessly transfer data, including supplier details, accounts, and sub-accounts.

The AP automation was customised to suit Synapse’s financial processes, including the multi-tiered approvals process for supplier invoices and purchase orders.

“The approvals workflow in Lightyear allows invoices to be approved in a timely manner”, highlights Sharlene Roach. This significant time savings allows the team to focus more on budgeting and resource allocation.

Enhancing the Quality of Financial Performance

Payment accuracy is vital for Synapse’s finance team. Lightyear offers features such as supplier bank detail reconciliation, which helps the team prevent fraud. The supplier bank detail and price checker also ensure that suppliers aren’t overcharging them.

“Duplicate Flagging is also beneficial as this reduces the risk of duplicate payments.” Sharlene shares.

In Lightyear, Synapse’s finance team set up keyword rules, such as GL coding, tracking categories, and supplier tax rates. This allowed the team to create custom rules at a supplier level and determine how bills are coded.

“The automation of coding using keyword rules has also provided significant benefits like increased efficiency and accuracy in the coding of supplier invoices”, explains Sharlene.

Lightyear also gave Synapse the “ability to complete the month-end close processes more efficiently”

The Results

A 33% Save on AP Tasks

Synapse hasn’t looked back since implementing Lightyear. They have saved themselves 33% of their time on accounts payable tasks. Having previously spent an average of 30 hours per week on AP processes, they now spend an average of 20 hours per week. With Lightyear, they’ve saved themselves 40+ hours a month.

Sharlene described the integration between Lightyear and MYOB Acumatica as “seamless” and would “highly recommend automation of AP processes”.