Blog written by Kate Studrawa
Accounts payable (AP) departments are often the last frontier for digital transformation. While marketing and sales teams have embraced sleek, automated tools for years, many finance teams are still buried in paper invoices and manual data entry.
It isn’t because finance leaders love paper cuts. It’s because the hurdles to adopting new technology feel incredibly high. When you look at overhauling how money leaves your business, caution is natural.
This blog explores the five most significant barriers stopping businesses from fully automating their AP processes.
1) The Cost of Software and Implementation
Budget is almost always the first conversation stopper. Historically, enterprise-grade financial software came with an enterprise-grade price tag. You weren’t just paying for a license; you were paying for servers, consultants, and perpetual maintenance fees. For small to mid-sized businesses, the ROI calculation didn’t add up.
Many leaders look at the upfront cost and decide that the status quo of manual invoice processing is “free.” But manual invoice processing hides its costs in labor hours, late fees, and missed early payment discounts.
How Fintech Solves the Cost Barrier
Fintech is an affordable solution specifically addressing this pain point. By serving almost 300,000 businesses over the last 35 years, we have achieved the scale needed to keep our clients’ costs low. You get enterprise-level power without the crushing capital expenditure. The goal isn’t to add a new line item to your budget, but to replace the hidden costs of inefficiency with a predictable, lower-cost AP automation technology investment.
2) Staff Knowledge and Capabilities
“Who is going to run this?” This is a valid fear. If your current team consists of incredible accountants who aren’t necessarily tech-savvy, introducing a complex automation platform feels like setting them up to fail. There is often a worry that the learning curve will grind operations to a halt. If the software requires coding knowledge or advanced IT skills to manage day-to-day, it’s not a solution; it’s a burden.
How Fintech Solves the Knowledge Gap
Technology should serve people, not the other way around. This is why we have dedicated client services and account management teams. Our people are dedicated to your people. Our teams are focused on your account, ready to support your business, schedule trainings, and assist whenever needed. We bridge the knowledge gap by acting as an extension of your team. If your staff has questions, they have a designated human support rep to turn to, ensuring they feel empowered rather than overwhelmed.
3) Concerns About Data Security
Financial data is the lifeblood of your business. Handing that data over to a third-party vendor requires immense trust. In an era of daily headlines about data breaches, hesitation here is not just understandable; it is responsible. Finance leaders often worry about where the data lives, who has access to it, and what happens if a breach occurs.
How Fintech Solves the Security Barrier
Security is not just a feature; it is the foundation of best financial data practices. Fintech treats your data with higher security standards than most internal servers can provide.
We are actively working toward SOC 2 compliance, a rigorous standard that validates the effectiveness of our security controls. Furthermore, we have a thorough data team solely dedicated to privacy and protection. We invest heavily in security infrastructure, so you don’t have to worry about digital vulnerabilities.
4) The Complexity of ERP Integration
“Will it talk to my current system?” If the answer is “maybe” or “with a lot of work,” the deal is usually off. An AP automation tool that sits in a silo is useless. It must push and pull data seamlessly to and from your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The fear is that integration will be a months-long nightmare involving expensive IT contractors and broken data links.
How Fintech Solves Integration Complexity
Our integration team handles all onboarding and connections directly with your team. We alleviate the burden of you having to figure out APIs or file maps yourself. Because we have experience with thousands of businesses, chances are we have already solved the integration puzzle for your specific setup. We do the heavy lifting to ensure the data flows correctly from day one.
5) Staff Resistant to Change
People fear that AP automation means replacement. They worry their roles will disappear or that the “new way” will be harder than the “old way” they’ve perfected over twenty years.
How Fintech Solves Adoption Resistance
The antidote to resistance is usability and support. If a tool makes someone’s job easier immediately, resistance fades quickly. Our solution is a user-friendly portal that allows your day-to-day to operate more efficiently. It is intuitive, requiring little training to master basic functions. But beyond the UI, our support team is there to help every step of the way. When your staff realizes that automation eliminates the boring data entry they hate and frees them up for more interesting work, they stop resisting and start championing the change.
Breaking Barriers Starts with the Right Partner
AP automation doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. The barriers that once made digital transformation seem out of reach—cost, complexity, security, and adoption resistance—are real, but they’re not insurmountable. With the right solution and the right support, automation becomes less about risk and more about opportunity.
Fintech was built to remove these obstacles so your team can work smarter, not harder. By combining secure technology with hands-on guidance, we make automation accessible, affordable, and practical for businesses of every size.
If you’re ready to move past the paper and take the first step toward a more efficient AP process, we’re here to help.
Start the conversation today and see how simple automation can be.
