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MakersHub routes every bill from Liberty Fence & Supply's branches into one AP inbox and sends it to the branch manager who owns it. Once a bill is approved and paid, both sync to QuickBooks. For a specialty contractor with six branch managers, that settles something general manager and owner Santo Pernicano used to confirm by hand before every payment: whether each bill had been approved.
Liberty Fence builds wood, iron and chain-link fencing, mostly for commercial projects, from seven operational footprints: Austin, Dallas and San Antonio in Texas; Oklahoma City; and Phoenix, Tucson and Lakeside in Arizona. Pernicano runs the business on two priorities: every branch manager needs an accurate read on their own P&L, and every vendor needs to be paid quickly and correctly.
Where does approval get stuck when six branches approve their own bills?
Before MakersHub, every bill at Liberty traveled on paper. A branch manager printed it, approved it and mailed it to a single AP person, who reconciled it against everything else arriving from the other branches and passed it to Pernicano for payment. Checks went out from six different locations. One person sat at the center of six mail routes, and Pernicano could pay only what reached that desk.
"We were mailing checks from six different locations. It was difficult to track, slow to reconcile, and stressful to make sure every invoice had the right approvals before I could pay."
Branch managers knew their jobs and their vendors, and they approved bills. What Pernicano lacked was proof. Approval happened on paper, in six places, and the only confirmation was an envelope arriving at the AP desk. A bill with a missing signature looked the same as one still in the mail. MakersHub replaces the envelope with a record: every approval is logged against the bill before it reaches payment. MakersHub also shows every bill still waiting on an approver, and exactly which branch manager it's waiting on.
How does MakersHub keep early-pay discounts from expiring in the mail?
Early-pay discounts usually get discussed as a treasury decision. For a multi-branch contractor, they're decided earlier, by how fast a bill moves from the branch that received it to the person who can pay it.
Liberty's discounts come from paying vendors within 10 days. Every day a bill spends in transit between a branch and AP comes out of that window. The terms were printed on the bill the whole time, and the paper route put the discount at risk on every one of them.
MakersHub reads each vendor's payment terms off the bill with Net Terms Extraction, so Liberty's AP team knows which bills qualify for a discount while there's still time to take it.
Which AP software sends each location's invoices to that location's manager for approval?
MakersHub sends each Liberty location's bills to that location's manager for approval, then syncs approved bills and payments to QuickBooks. Bills from every location arrive in one AP inbox as structured data, ready to approve, and Pernicano pays approved bills in one click. Vendors receive a precise payment confirmation, which gives them the visibility they lacked when checks went out from six locations.
The results are on the record in Liberty Fence's customer story. Paying vendors within 10 days now saves Liberty $32,000 a year in early-pay discounts. Month-end close runs three times faster, with fewer bills left open at the end of the month.
"MakersHub has completely changed how we handle AP. I know every bill has been reviewed, I can pay vendors faster, and we're saving real money with discounts we used to miss."
If your branches still approve bills on paper, see how MakersHub routes them by location.
How does MakersHub keep a branch P&L current every week?
Liberty's branch managers now review their P&Ls every week. That change never shows up in an AP report, and it depends entirely on AP.
A branch P&L is only as current as the last bill posted to it. When bills moved by mail, each branch's costs trailed the work by however long the paper took, so the numbers a manager saw described a week that had already closed. MakersHub syncs each approved bill to QuickBooks with its branch attached, so a branch manager reads this week's costs this week.
The payment side matters to the same managers. Pernicano’s second priority was paying vendors quickly and correctly to keep working relationships strong, and those relationships run through the branches. A supplier that trusts Liberty's payments keeps working with the branch that placed the order. The branch owns both the cost and the relationship, and MakersHub now keeps the record of both: the approval in the platform and the payment confirmation the vendor receives.
Why do all six branch managers still approve in MakersHub?
For a contractor adding branches, count the places where approval happens. Liberty had six, and each one stood between a vendor's bill and a discount. MakersHub holds every branch's bills in one queue until that branch's manager approves them, so Pernicano sees each one before he pays.
Book a walkthrough with a bill from one of your branches and we'll route it to the right approver in front of you.