Cheney Brothers streamlines payments with BILL Supplier Payments Plus

Summary

Cheney Brothers, Inc. is a food distributor owned and operated by Performance Food Group (PFG), headquartered in Riviera Beach, Florida. Originally founded in 1925, the company serves over 16,000 clients, including restaurants, hotels, and institutions throughout the Southeastern United States and beyond. 

To make sure their customers have the supplies they need, Cheney Brothers employs more than 3,500 workers, maintains a fleet of over 800 trucks, and offers a vast array of products, including fresh produce, meats, seafood, dairy, dry goods, frozen foods, and even non-food items like cleaning supplies and equipment. 

“Cheney Brothers was created with our customers in mind," says Christa Carlson, Accounts Payable Manager for Cheney Brothers. "Our culture derives mainly from the fact that we're a family company first. It's a warm and embracing community. I've worked alongside some amazing individuals.”  

Due to its massive volume of payments received from customers using BILL, the company wanted to improve operational efficiency and significantly enhance its financial processes through automation. After all, for an enterprise business with annual sales over $3 billion, receiving and reconciling payments from various small businesses can result in a major headache. 

“Combined accounts. Partial payments. Even when we're doing everything right, the sheer complexity of getting paid for all those items takes more hours than I like to think about," Carlson admits. "With so many accounts and portals to hunt through, tracking cash flow for the end-of-month close can take days or even weeks. There's just nothing easy about it.” 

Automating the hardest part of receivables, without the heavy lift

Implementing BILL Supplier Payments Plus has transformed that incredibly time-consuming process. Carlson shares, “The integration with BILL has resulted in significant time savings, less manual intervention, and far more overall efficiency. Now, we get a single, customized remittance file with our payment and customer details from BILL. That makes things much smoother for our customers across each of our locations, which have their own credit and accounting departments.”

The implementation and onboarding was also a smooth process. "Our dedicated account partner from BILL has been amazing from the jump," Carlson says. "We've had to deal with platforms before where we couldn't even get a call back.” 

Nicole A. Izquierdo-Hill, Credit Director at Cheney Brothers, has been equally impressed with the transformation within their AR systems. “BILL has not only enhanced our receivables functions with outstanding customer service, but also helped streamline our processes. If I had to describe it in one word, I'd say it's effective, pure and simple," says Izquierdo-Hill. “I’ve been tasked with enhancing operations through tech-forward solutions. BILL absolutely falls in line with our goals, integrating reporting that has taken our posting and research to a higher level.”

One of the biggest differences has been the significant reduction in manual work related to remittance files. “Reconciliation used to take so much manual intervention to track down missing or messy details in remittance files. With BILL, it's little to zero. I literally just drag and drop to our check system, and I simply have to verify information at a quick glance. I can see such a difference in how much time is saved now that we don’t have to deal with individual, often incomplete, remittances. It’s just so much easier,” Carlson says. “Starting from the implementation, the BILL Supplier Payments Plus solution was pretty much just set up and go.” 

Looking ahead

Cheney Brothers views its partnership with BILL as a long-term strategic advantage to gain efficiency, accuracy, and scalability without compromising the company’s customer-centric values. 

“My role is focused on driving innovation and operational advancement across finance, and BILL has been a key partner in that journey," Izquierdo-Hill notes. "From batch payment processing to deeper reporting insights, the solution has delivered measurable improvements. I’m excited about growing our business with BILL by our side.” 

“Reconciliation used to take so much manual intervention to track down missing or messy details in remittance files. With BILL, it's little to zero. I can see such a difference in how much time is saved now that we don’t have to deal with individual, often incomplete, remittances.”