LatAm Businesses Choosing Automated Invoicing Over Spreadsheets, Emails and Text Messages

In most countries in Latin America, it is mandatory that all business transactions must have an electronic invoice in the middle.

“What this does is that it helps us control internally for businesses obviously the movement of money, but that also adds a large volume of operations to our already complex businesses,” Flexio Co-Founder and CEO Nathan Schorr told PYMNTS.

Wire transfers are the norm for B2B payments in Latin America, and that complicates the invoicing process too. Businesses tend to use multiple Excel spreadsheets, emails and WhatsApp messages, and then log into a bank account to see if they’ve received the payment from their client.

“So, there are all those complexities, where now the fact is that it’s mandatory by law, you have to have digital payments in Mexico, where the timing is just right for a solution like Flexio to help everybody out,” Schorr said.

Helping Businesses Improve Their Cash Flow

Flexio automates accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payable (AP) for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), generally those that remit at least 35 invoices per month or pay at least 65. Normally these businesses would log in to their tax authority account, download the invoices and manually input that information into an Excel spreadsheet.

With Flexio, the platform connects to the tax authority, sends the business a notification each time it receives a new invoice, makes sure the information on this invoice is correct, and then inputs it into the business’s own reports. If there’s a mistake on the invoice, Flexio notifies the supplier.

The company is active in Mexico and aims to expand throughout Latin America in the coming months. Flexio announced Feb. 4 that it had raised a $3 million seed round.

Read more: B2B Payments Platform Flexio Raises $3M

Helping Businesses Pay, Get Paid on Time

One aim of the Flexio platform is to help businesses get paid on time. When it comes to collections, some of the businesses the platform has been helping have been able to reduce their AR from 120 days past expiration date to 45 days past expiration date of an invoice, Schorr reported.

“Basically, the theory behind what we’re building at Flexio is that if we help you with your operations, you’ll be able to improve your cash flow without the necessity of going to a bank and asking for a line of credit, for example,” Schorr said.

In 2020, there were 9 billion invoices processed just in the Mexican market. To deal with these, the most common tool used by B2B businesses in Mexico and throughout the region is Excel.

“That means the opportunity is absolutely massive,” Schorr said.