How Automox's Senior AR Analyst saves a full workday each week

A full day a week spent on manual follow-up

Automox makes software that helps IT teams keep company devices updated and secure.

Before she automated the work, Cathy spent about a full day each week working through saved invoice views and handling follow-up by hand.

Tesorio was already in place when she joined Automox as a Senior AR Analyst. The team used it for basic dunning and to assign customers and invoices to team members by category. Tags were available, and Cathy saw room to make them a more consistent part of everyday collections work.

Automox uses NetSuite for billing and Tesorio for collections. Once an invoice is created, customer and invoice tags give Cathy the information she needs to tailor outreach, including payment terms, account history and special arrangements.

“The tagging is phenomenal in Tesorio,” Cathy said. “Everything is right there. It saves us a lot of time in research.”

From saved views to automated campaigns

Cathy calls herself a systems person who isn’t an administrator. She likes “pushing all the buttons” to see what a tool can do. That’s how she realized the invoice views she had been working through by hand could become automated campaigns.

She tested a few at a time, checked the timing and fixed the logic before rolling them out across the portfolio.

She also rebuilt the customer and invoice tags, updated collection templates and added custom fields so the team could see key account information in Tesorio. Automox’s account managers and customer success managers are now copied automatically on the appropriate emails.

“I figured out how to take just my views and make them into a campaign,” Cathy said. “So everything is completely automated. There’s one or two things that I still have to do manually, but that’s about it.”

“I’m 60% more efficient with Tesorio,” she said. “Follow-up that used to take hours each week now runs automatically, so I can stay on top of my portfolio and focus on customer issues.”

Finding problems before they delay payment

Automox now uses campaigns for more than payment reminders.

• New customers automatically receive a short packet requesting key account and payment information.
• Invoices over $20,000 trigger an early check-in to confirm the customer received the invoice and has what they need.
• Customers who still have Automox’s old bank details on file automatically receive the new remittance instructions when an invoice is created.

For the bank-change workflow specifically, Cathy says automation saves her two to three hours a week.

“Customers don’t want to tell you there’s a problem until it’s two weeks past due,” Cathy said.

Earlier outreach gives the team a chance to find problems before they hold up payment.

Tags also help Cathy write follow-ups that reflect each customer’s situation. If a customer received special 90-day terms, Cathy can see that information immediately and follow up based on the agreement without researching the account first.

At the account level, Tesorio’s reporting shows Automox’s rolling annual invoice count increased 18% while overdue AR decreased 29%.

More time for the work that needs a person

Automox’s AR team divides its portfolio across direct customers, resellers and managed service providers. The Tesorio dashboard shows each person’s share of the portfolio, helping the team spot an uneven workload and keep it balanced.

Leadership wants the team to have more time for internal projects and professional development rather than spending every day keeping up with repetitive tasks.

With standard reminders running automatically, Cathy can focus on customer questions and disputes while continuing to improve the team’s collections process. She has refined the team’s tags and templates and helped onboard a new team member. She now spot-checks campaigns instead of sending every reminder herself.

“Tesorio handles a lot of it,” Cathy said when describing the workflow to a new team member. “All we’re really doing is focusing on exceptions and disputes.”

Cathy also refers to Tesorio’s tags and notes during cash posting. If a payment could apply to several invoices, that context helps her understand what the customer intended before applying it through Automox’s existing process.

The next manual task

More customers now send the remittance details Automox asks for. That helps the team apply payments correctly, but it also fills Cathy’s inbox.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” she said.

During a demonstration of Tesorio’s Collections Agent, Cathy found herself “saying wow quite a bit.” She saw how the agent could handle straightforward inbox messages and flag the ones that needed her attention.

“Once I saw the Collections Agent can do some of that for us, I was like, this could be it,” she said.

Start with the task you hate

“I always start with the pain points,” Cathy said. “What is the task that you do that you’re like, ‘I hate this, it’s the worst part of my week’? That is what you focus on to get it off your plate.”

She followed that advice at Automox. The reminders she once sent one by one now go out automatically, giving her more time to work through disputes, answer customer questions and improve the team’s collections process.

Asked what she would do at a company without Tesorio, Cathy said, “I would definitely ask if we can get Tesorio. Everything else that I’ve ever done in my career has been completely manual.”