Making SMEs Run Smoothly: René Lacerte’s Cashview (Part 5)

SM: More of an ADP model, or really an effective SaaS model.

RL: Yes, and ADP has not actually adopted to the Web. The powers of having the data remotely stored; the power of having multiple people access it; the powers of having multiple people update it without telling your customer and having one version is incredible. Everything about it makes sense. I cannot understand why anyone in the software business would not be putting all of their resources into this. I am glad they are not because this gives me an opportunity to do something about it.

SM: My readers and I know PayCycle well, since I just did that story. Tell me more about Cashview’s business model.

RL: We enable small and medium businesses to send, receive, pay and store their bills online. If you have ever been tired of the shoe box or the filing cabinet that is never in order, or not having payable information at your fingertips because you are traveling, we take care of all of that. Any particular transaction is covered.

If I step back and talk about accounting in general, it is a record of transactions. It is not the actual transaction. The transaction is the piece of paper that is the contract, the bill or the check. Accounting is just a record saying there is some amount out there for this vendor. What we do is take the first piece of paper, which is a contract. The customer can scan, fax, or e-mail it in. That becomes the basis of a transaction. When an invoice comes through, a transaction gets assigned to it as well as the vendor. When the check gets cut it is also assigned to the transaction. When the check is cleared that is also assigned to the transaction. If you call me, and I am looking at my Cashview, within one click of logging into my account I can see all of the bills which are due in the next month.

SM: Customers are receiving the bills through Cashview as well?

RL: You receive them by having your office manager, or someone who is not paid as much as you, fax them directly to us. You can also have your vendors fax or email it directly to us. You are not changing the transaction. What happens is when you receive the document, instead of filing it or wondering where to put it, you simply “drop” it into your Cashview, put it in the fax and hit speed dial. Based on the fax, we create a transaction, and we can route the transaction internal to your company for work flow.

What we are finding is that a lot of small businesses say they do not need workflow, but when they start using Cashview they realize they do need a workflow and it is very simple to do. Why don’t I have my experts approve the bill to makes sure we are not overpaying? That is much easier to do when you have a simple workflow. We make it so that you can see all of the amounts due within one click. You can see the invoices. With a second click you can see all of the bills that vendor has ever sent. With the same second click you can see all of the documents stored from that vendor. With a third click you can look at all of the payments for any particular bill you have looked at. With a fourth click you can see an image of the canceled check. If a vendor calls up and says, “You owe me money”, you can answer that question with four clicks: “No, I have an image of the cleared, canceled check with your signature.”

This segment is part 5 in the series : Making SMEs Run Smoothly: René Lacerte’s Cashview
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