Source Energy Services
Internal Invoice Automation
Invoice automation tool · Logistics Analyst & Product Manager
Project Summary
Source Energy Services was a newly public energy services company. It supplied frac sand (proppant), storage, and logistics to the energy industry, and repeatedly set global records for daily sand throughput at well sites.
I worked as both a logistics analyst, driving operational efficiency, and a product manager, building analytics products and automating internal processes. This case covers one of those automations: an invoice tool that changed who created the invoices.
1,000+ hrs
Invoice review saved annually
4–9 days
Faster payment for truckers
40%+
Fewer invoice disputes
The Problem
Source relied on small, family-run trucking companies to haul sand from our terminals to well sites. Each company sent us a daily invoice with every load as a line item, but those invoices usually arrived about five days after the work.
Each one then had to be checked against our own delivery records. Our accounts payable reviewers each spent one to three hours a day on it, disputes were common, and truckers waited 5 to 10 days after a delivery to get paid.
The Solution: Flipping the Process
On paper, our new delivery data held everything on a trucker’s invoice. If that was true, we didn’t need to wait days for partners to bill us, some of them still working from paper. We could generate the invoices ourselves, but before asking for engineering time, I wanted to prove it.
I built a prototype in Excel that turned a day’s delivery records into finished invoices for each partner, with our agreed rates and daily minimums applied. When it worked, we ran it alongside the existing process until we proved it was fully accurate.
Then I worked with our developers to automate it. Each day, every partner got their invoice by email, reviewed it, and disputed anything they disagreed with, instead of our team checking their numbers.
Validation Artifact: The Invoice Prototype
Days from delivery to payment
Before
Paid on day 5 to 10
After
Paid on day 1
Results
Our accounts payable team went from hours of invoice review each day to minutes, saving over 1,000 hours a year. Disputes dropped by an estimated 40% or more, which improved partner relationships and saved time on both sides. Truckers were paid the day after a delivery instead of 5 to 10 days later.
Faster payment relative to the industry also mattered beyond accounts payable. Trucking capacity was tight at the time, and paying the next day was a huge win for attracting additional partner drivers. This meant we could take on more and bigger contracts, driving additional revenue.
