How Paragon Films Runs Invoice to Reconciled Cash Inside Dynamics 365

About Paragon Films

Paragon Films, a US-based manufacturer of high-performance and ultra-high-performance stretch films. Founded in Oklahoma in 1988, the company operates manufacturing plants in Oklahoma, North Carolina, Washington and Mexico, serving customers in all 50 US states as well as Canada, Mexico, South America and international markets.  

One system, from invoice to reconciled cash

At Paragon Films, a vendor invoice can travel from capture and approval through payment and ultimately to a reconciled bank statement without leaving Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations.

Truvio AP Automation powered by ExFlow captures invoice data, supports coding and matching, and routes approximately 1,000 invoices a month for approval. Truvio's Treasury Automation Suite (TAS) handles vendor payments, registers checks with the bank, applies customer cash and reconciles accounts every morning.

One vendor is accountable for the whole process.

It didn't start smoothly.

Paragon Films introduced AP automation in the middle of a major ERP replacement. By fall 2023, the accounting team was considering a different AP solution.

What changed the trajectory wasn't another product. It was a candid conversation at a conference, followed by a hands-on review with the people who built the software.

A hard start inside an ERP migration

Paragon Films' automation journey began long before Dynamics 365.

Under Dynamics AX 2012, a third-party document management and OCR platform handled invoice capture, matching and approvals. The process had been refined over approximately a decade. Truvio's Treasury Automation Suite had supported Paragon Films' treasury processes over the same period.

The move to Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations created an important decision. Paragon Films could maintain a separate document platform alongside its new ERP or bring AP automation directly into Dynamics.

As Mullican explains:

Truvio AP Automation suited Paragon Films' invoice profile: approximately one quarter of invoices are PO-matched, while three quarters are expense-coded.

But Truvio AP Automation went live in January 2023 while the wider ERP migration was still taking shape. Mullican is candid about it: "It turned into something much bigger, and most of the reason was ours."

Paragon Films routes invoices according to site, department, vendor and account, with position-based signing limits and escalation rules layered on top. Those workflows depended on underlying data, including user accounts, worker records, position hierarchies and vendor ownership, that wasn't yet fully available from the migration.

Workflow changes were still arriving days before the cutover.

The impact became apparent quickly. During the first four months, approximately 42% of PO invoices failed to auto-match. Many involved high-volume packaging and resin suppliers whose configurations had not been completed at go-live. As the supplier data caught up, the failure rate dropped to around 5% by summer.

But the user experience still wasn't where Paragon Films wanted it to be. Invoices could reach the wrong approver, screens contained unnecessary fields, and overlapping approval rules made workflows difficult to maintain.

By fall 2023, Paragon Films' accounting team was ready to consider alternatives.

The conversation that changed the trajectory

While attending a conference and evaluating other solutions, Mullican met the chief executive of SignUp Software, the company that originally developed ExFlow and is now part of Truvio.

Asked how Paragon Films was finding the product, Mullican gave a direct answer: the company wasn't seeing the return it expected and was experiencing serious issues.

Within weeks, the SignUp team began a formal solution review.

Running from November 2023 through January 2024, the review brought product specialists together with Paragon Films' AP team to examine the live environment, understand the pain points and identify the underlying configuration issues.

The team found incomplete routing reference data, missing records for some capture scenarios, unnecessary approval-screen fields and overlapping authority rules in Paragon Films' configuration. It also identified ways to simplify invoice validation for Paragon Films' vendor mix.

Most of the resulting fixes took hours or days rather than months. As Mullican puts it: "Almost none of it was a product problem."

The intervention changed the trajectory. With AP automation tuned to Paragon Films' environment, the company had what it originally set out to build: a connected process from invoice to reconciled cash, running inside Dynamics 365.

AP today: an exception list, not a queue

The headline numbers held through the review. What changed was the experience of running AP. Today, approximately 1,000 invoices a month move through Truvio AP Automation.

Since mid-2023, 95% of PO invoices have matched without manual intervention. A quarter of all invoices are approved on the same day they're scanned, nearly 60% within two days and approximately 90% within a week.

The average time from scan to final approval is around three and a half days, with posting running automatically after approval.

Mullican describes the change simply:

The remaining daily exceptions are primarily three-way-match variances: freight added by a vendor, a unit price that differs from the purchase order, or goods that have not yet been received.

Only two types of invoices are still keyed manually: resin invoices covering multiple purchase orders and invoices from vendors that omit Paragon Films' item number.

Cancelled invoices have also fallen from 3.3% in 2023 to 1.2% over the past 12 months.

At Paragon Films, Truvio AP Automation has come through every Microsoft service update since 2023 without the update becoming a separate project.

From approved invoice to payment and reconciliation

AP automation is only one part of Paragon Films' finance process.

During its move from AX 2012 to Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations, Paragon Films also migrated its Treasury Automation Suite capabilities, including electronic vendor payments, Positive Pay, automated bank reconciliation and customer-payment settlement.

Mullican describes that part of the migration as "uneventful."

Vendor payments

Paragon Films makes approximately 9,000 vendor payments each year, with 95–97% processed electronically.

Check volumes have declined from approximately 470 annually in 2023 to a pace of around 200 in 2026.

Cash application

Paragon Films also processes approximately 6,000 customer payments each year through its automated settlement process.

These include lockbox checks and ACH remittances.

Approximately 70% are applied automatically, leaving only five to eight payments a day requiring manual matching.

Paragon Films' CFO and accounting team describe the impact:

Better together: invoice to reconciled cash inside Dynamics

Each solution delivers value independently. For Paragon Films, however, the bigger benefit comes from connecting the processes.

An invoice approved through Truvio AP Automation becomes a vendor transaction in Dynamics 365. Treasury automation handles the payment, Positive Pay registers the check with the bank, and automated bank reconciliation closes the loop.

The process remains within Dynamics.

 Mullican sees the solutions as an extension of what Dynamics itself does well:

Since January 2026, both solutions have been part of Truvio.

For Mullican, consolidation under one company has practical consequences: one security questionnaire, one set of update notes to review before Microsoft releases, and one roadmap conversation.

More importantly, as he puts it:

Controls that don't depend on people

Automation has also strengthened the consistency of Paragon Films' financial controls.

Every check is registered with the bank through Positive Pay before it can clear. Payment files are generated and transmitted by the system, removing a manual step from the process.

Bank reconciliation runs daily, meaning discrepancies can surface the following morning rather than waiting until month-end.

Every invoice carries its own history

Each invoice in Dynamics contains its image and approval history.

Department managers own their invoices, while finance can see who coded and approved each transaction without having to ask AP for the information.

That puts the supporting information alongside the financial transaction itself and lets finance see it without creating another process outside Dynamics.

Room to grow

Paragon Films' invoice and payment volumes have remained relatively steady over the past three years while the business around them has evolved.

Mullican believes the team could absorb another thousand invoices per month, with the additional volume primarily increasing exception-based work rather than routine processing demands.

There is also an onboarding benefit.

New finance employees learn one system-enforced process and can become productive within weeks.

Today, Paragon Films' US operations close the books in two business days, without finance teams chasing invoices or payments to get there.

Lessons for D365 finance teams

After going through the migration and optimization process, Mullican has several recommendations for other finance organizations considering a similar move.

Simplify approvals before automating them.

"A workflow with dozens of routing combinations is a maintenance burden whoever configures it."

Avoid running an ISV go-live inside an ERP go-live where possible.

If the two must happen together, expect configuration to trail the availability of migration data.

Understand everything the old system does before replacing it.

Paragon Films discovered that its previous platform also supported capex, asset-disposal and manual-payment approvals. Those processes needed new homes too.

Get the people who know the product deeply involved early.

For Paragon Films, direct access to the people who understood the product in detail proved critical to resolving the implementation issues.

Watch what the dashboard doesn't show.

As Mullican puts it:

From invoice to reconciled cash

Paragon Films' finance team calls payment posting in Dynamics 365 a game changer.

The bigger result is a connected path from invoice to reconciled cash, running inside Dynamics 365, with automation spanning AP, payments, cash application and bank reconciliation, and one partner accountable for the whole process.

See how Truvio AP Automation and Treasury Automation Suite work together in Microsoft Dynamics 365.