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Accelerate Fund III invests in PayShepherd contractor billing technology, saving millions for big industry

Posted by Accelerate Fund | April 8, 2021

Calgary, AB, April 8, 2021 – Accelerate Fund III today announced investment into PayShepherd, a Calgary-based contractor billing solution that captures high volume contracts and timesheets for big industrial businesses, detecting overbilling and making contract history transparent for all parties. 

Large industrial businesses like pulp mills routinely have $30 million or more of contracted services in place, approved by different managers in different parts of facilities. Without a unified solution to monitor billing on those agreements, accounting and finance teams routinely overlook billing discrepancies and overpay on contracts despite best efforts to manually monitor accuracy. 

With PayShepherd, industrial customers require their hundreds of service providers to submit contracts and billing through the one system.  PayShepherd standardizes contract formats and overlays analytics to detect overbilling or other payment issues in real-time. Along with enforcing accurate billing, the system speeds up billing approval and payment and displays for industrial businesses the amount the system has saved them in billing errors.

“Prior to founding PayShepherd, I ran a fast-growing industrial construction company with another co-founder of this business. Our livelihood was dependent on fair billing but in busy times, we sometimes made accidental errors,” Wesley Sessenwein, Founder & CEO PayShepherd. “Those mistakes can be devastating to a service provider’s relationship with a big client, and can multiply and become hugely expensive to companies. We saw the need for a better way to rapidly detect and support resolution of billing issues for industrial companies.”

To date, PayShepherd has focused on the pulp and paper market and is working with some of the highest producing mills in Canada. Founded under the name Project Recapture, the business recently rebranded to support further customer expansion in pulp and paper as well as into other heavy industry businesses seeking to manage costs including power plants, oil and gas and mining facilities. 

“Contract and spend management for large industrial businesses is an underserved market,” said Yasmine Al-Hussein, Investment Analyst for Accelerate Fund III. “We have confidence in the growth achievable by the PayShepherd team given their rare domain knowledge and proven ability to execute on strategy. Plus there are untapped opportunities with the volume of data they are gathering.”

Investment from Accelerate Fund III will enable PayShepherd to enhance sales and business development capacity and further build out its product with user insight from support. 

About PayShepherd  

PayShepherd is a contract billing solution provider offering industrial businesses a secure and simple-to-use cloud-based platform to detect overbilling and accurately manage contract spend. We help industrial businesses and service contractors by identifying billing mistakes as they happen, supporting rapid resolution, and realizing faster payment turnaround along with reliable cashflow. We serve  some of the highest producing pulp and paper mills in Canada, and the problem set PayShepherd solves for is applicable in a variety of other heavy industries. For more information, visit www.payshepherd.com 

About Accelerate Fund III  

Accelerate Fund III is an early-stage angel co-investment fund in Alberta. We co-invest alongside angel investors in financing rounds and will typically invest up to $500,000 on the same terms and conditions as private investors. We work with formal angel groups, super-angels, family funds, and individual angel investors. Accelerate Fund III invests in private, early-stage Alberta companies in knowledge-based industries including: information and communications technology, energy technology, as well as life sciences, including agriculture and biotech. Accelerate Fund III is managed by Yaletown Partners with the support of The A100. Alberta Enterprise Corporation is Accelerate Fund III’s lead Limited Partner. www.acceleratefund.ca

 

Media Inquiries:

Accelerate Fund III
Material Insight
403.703.0029
claudia@materialinsight.com

 

 

 


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