How Covetrus Scaled AR Through a Merger with a Self-Service Payment Portal

800 employees to 5,000. Five subsidiaries. A merger and an IPO. That's what the company now known as Covetrus experienced in 2018, when Vets First Choice merged with the animal health division of Henry Schein Inc. and then went public.

Founded in 2010 to give veterinarians greater visibility into patient care and proactive prescription management, the business had already acquired five subsidiaries before the merger. Going public and global at the same time created new complexity in the finance organization, and the accounts receivable team felt it first.

Most transactions ran automatically through storefronts, but a large number of veterinary practices still relied on mailed invoices and paper checks. Others called in to pay by phone. The AR team processed those payments on a Verifone terminal and posted each one by hand to the customer's account in NetSuite. Customers could only pay when they could reach the team during business hours.

With transaction volume climbing, Covetrus needed an automated AR workflow it could replicate for every customer across every subsidiary. It had to accept every payment method customers used, offer a better online experience, and integrate with NetSuite OneWorld so staff wouldn't toggle between two systems. Most of the platforms the team evaluated fell short: some lacked payment methods or strong enough security, and others focused on collections rather than payments.

Paystand's SuiteApp connected Covetrus to time-saving automation that increased accounts receivable efficiency all inside the NetSuite OneWorld application the team already used. During a two-month implementation, Paystand made sure the required accounting functionality was available in the Paystand for NetSuite SuiteApp.

The workflow starts in the ERP. When an order is triggered in NetSuite, Paystand automatically emails the customer the matching invoice. The customer pays through a link embedded in that email, with no username or password to set up.

That self-service payment portal experience means veterinary practices can pay online at any time, with zero involvement from the AR team.

Once a customer pays, the payment is reconciled in Paystand and NetSuite simultaneously, and the customer immediately receives a payment confirmation for their records. Kristen and her team see a real-time dashboard of payments inside NetSuite as they arrive.

For customers who still prefer to call, the virtual terminal handles phone and in-person payments. Customer payment data is tokenized for secure storage, and the team can send individual invoices or invoice summaries on request and receive payments in any currency.