Southern Pipe & Supply opens the taps on AP efficiency, savings, and visibility

Southern Pipe & Supply isn’t just any old plumbing, HVAC, and industrial supplies distributor: with over 135 branches across the Southeastern U.S., it’s been a leading multi-generational, family-run business built on trusted relationships with customers big and small since 1934.

But having to handle more than 20,000 invoices every month through a decentralized, manual process was costly, chaotic, and completely unsustainable for a company with plans to double in size.

Before Corcentric came into the picture, every branch processed its own invoices. That meant paper trails, mystery invoices, lost discounts, and zero visibility. As April Davidson, the company’s AP lead puts it, “We didn’t know where invoices were being sent. We had no idea where payments were coming from or who was inputting them.”

Not exactly the ideal level of efficiency when you’re on tight vendor payment terms and aiming for growth.

“With over 4,000 vendors and tight payment terms, being able to visualize any invoice at any given time maximizes our discounts — and lets us offer the best price to our customers.”
— April Davidson, Accounts Payable Lead, Southern Pipe & Supply

Enter Corcentric’s Cor360 Approval Workflow, empowering Southern Pipe to bring structure to the chaos.

The system now centralizes the entire AP process, giving the company real-time visibility into invoice statuses across all branches. Every invoice lands where it’s supposed to — digitally routed to the right person, at the right time, every time.

But the advantages go beyond just organization. Straight-through processing now handles more than half of Southern Pipe’s invoice volume automatically, with no human intervention needed. That’s not just a boost in speed. It’s a competitive advantage.

“With the ability to visualize any invoice at any time, we can ensure we’re maximizing early payment discounts,” says Davidson. And when you’re working with vendors like Rheem or Kohler, those discounts can stack up fast.

It’s also a foundation for scale. Southern Pipe plans to double its size over the next decade, and they’re leaning hard on Corcentric to make sure AP doesn’t become a bottleneck. “We’ve put a huge ball in Corcentric’s court,” says Davidson, “so we don’t have to keep adding headcount.”

The change for Southern Pipe has been transformative:

• Over 50% of invoices now processed straight through, with a target of 100% in sight.
• Up to 90% faster: Manual invoice processing took 3–4 minutes each. With Cor360, it’s now under 30 seconds, or zero if it’s processed straight-through. That’s time and money better spent.
• Improved early payment discount capture, directly impacting bottom-line costs and customer pricing.
• A move toward 100% electronic payments, reducing check fraud and cutting risk.
• Real-time visibility into invoice flow, exceptions, and audit trails, turning AP into a strategic lever.

And perhaps most telling? Southern Pipe’s finance team, once swamped with manual entry and chasing paperwork, is now positioned as a strategic partner in the business’s ambitious growth. “This has revolutionized our business,” Davidson says. “We finally have a system that grows with us.”