James Babcock, Inc. Automates Invoice Matching with Kojo

Before they found Kojo, the team at James Babcock, Inc. was handling procurement and invoicing just like many other contractors - the old fashioned way, with emails and manual data entry.

In particular, the invoice reconciliation process was inefficient and eating up valuable PM and office time. Dan Babcock, president of the company, explains, “Our accounts payable person would get invoices emailed to her every day, which she’d enter into Foundation. And then the invoices go to every PM to approve. This was a step we were really trying to get away from, because it bogs down the PMs’ time. It's just a lot of invoices and quite honestly, the last thing project managers want to do is approve them.”

This isn’t just about enjoyment - even if PMs loved approving invoices, in this labor market,  it’s probably not the best use of their time. This is often the accepted cost of potentially much more costly billing mistakes, which happen far too often. In a recent survey, trade contractors estimated that 10% of invoices have errors. Kojo found, by scanning real customer invoices, that the number is actually even higher - 27% of invoices have errors. 

So the James Babcock team was excited to partner with Kojo in developing the new Automated Invoice Matching feature. 

As Dan puts it, Kojo’s Automated Invoice Matching is “game changing.”

Kojo’s Automated Invoice Matching scans vendor invoices with no data entry, automatically compares them to the PO and Delivery receipt, and highlights errors. This includes mismatches with the PO prices and quantities, and also errors with items that weren’t delivered or arrived damaged to the site. By flagging errors automatically, Kojo makes it easy for contractors to avoid paying for mistakes.

There are efficiency gains as well. “Now, we can see if the invoices match in Kojo, and completely bypass the PMs. It’s taken a lot of invoice approval work off of our PMs’ plates.”

The accounting team also sees the benefits. Cathy, the controller, says, “Kojo's invoice reconciliation feature enables our accounting team to verify invoice accuracy without needing to involve the project managers - all the information we need is right there. We can approve invoices faster and it frees up the project managers' time. Our invoice approval process is truly much more efficient for accounting.” 

While Automated Invoice Matching has been a huge win for Dan’s team, Kojo is helping them in other ways as well. “Now, it's easier for the field to get the order correct,” which means fewer project delays. And with Kojo, “We're able to send orders out to more vendors. I see a lot of savings because of this.”

“At the end of the day it's about getting the materials in our field workers hands so they can install it,” summarizes Dan. “Kojo has been a big help to our company.”