How Monson Fruit Company eliminated a five-month invoice backlog with Fraxion

Monson Fruit Company eliminated a five-month invoice backlog and cut invoice processing from roughly a month and a half to three to four minutes per invoice with Fraxion.

Monson Fruit Company is a family-owned grower, packer, and shipper of fresh fruit based in Selah, Washington, operating 30+ orchards across Washington and Oregon. The company is the only cranberry packer on the West Coast, alongside its apple and cherry production. Monson Fruit uses Fraxion for purchasing, mobile field approvals, invoice processing and matching, and reporting, integrated with its Compu-Tech ERP.

About Monson Fruit Company

Monson Fruit Company is a family-owned operation that grows, packs, and ships fresh fruit from Selah, Washington. The company operates 30+ orchards across Washington and Oregon and is the only cranberry packer on the West Coast, alongside its apple and cherry production.

The challenge: A growing invoice backlog

Two challenges sit at the center of Monson Fruit's story.

Manual invoice inefficiencies. Invoice entry took over a month, with no paper trail for tracking. Retrieving invoices for audits required manual searching and scanning.

AP delays, missing documentation and manual matching contributed to a five-month backlog in some instances, with some invoices sitting unpaid for up to five months as AP waited on missing paperwork.

Alongside these, Monson faced a broader set of operational challenges as the business grew past thirty orchards:

• Multi-location complexity. Physical PO books at remote orchards led to misplaced paperwork, delayed orders, and reduced field spend visibility.

• Lack of spend visibility. There was no oversight of spend by orchard block, department, or vendor, meaning cost-saving opportunities were being missed.

• Inability to allocate spend. Costs were broadly categorized with no way to confirm actual usage.

• Inadequate spend control. Without defined thresholds, staff could purchase without a clear check on cost.

• Inefficient vendor management. With 300+ vendors, there was no way to identify key suppliers or consolidate spend.

Together, these gaps limited savings, strained vendor relationships, weakened accountability, and made it difficult for leadership to see where money was going as the business scaled.

What Monson Fruit needed

Monson Fruit had three primary goals:

• Increase visibility into purchasing and AP across a growing, multi-site operation
• Reduce administrative burden and speed up invoice-to-payment time
• Give field teams a real-time way to create and approve purchase requests

Beyond these goals, Fraxion also enabled block- and department-level cost allocation, encouraged more cost-conscious spending across the company, and surfaced vendor consolidation opportunities.

The solution: Invoice automation and ERP integration

Mobile app for field teams

Field staff create, approve, and manage purchase requests in real time from their phones, reducing reliance on the physical PO books previously used at remote orchards. Adoption has been smooth across the team.

Mobile approvals

Threshold-based purchase requests trigger instant manager notifications, and approval can be actioned on the spot rather than days later.

Block-level spend management

Every purchase is tied to a specific orchard and block, giving Monson real-time insight into input costs such as chemicals and fertilizer, supporting more precise budget alignment.

Cost allocation and vendor management

Costs are assigned directly to cost centers such as the packing line, grounds, and orchards, providing more accurate and granular cost allocation.  Spend analysis tools give Monson visibility across its 300+ vendors, enabling the team to identify opportunities for vendor consolidation and support better pricing negotiations. 

Over roughly a year, Monson expanded its use of Fraxion from mobile purchasing for field teams to broader capabilities including invoice processing, cost allocation, budgets, and invoice approval routes. 

The results: From months to minutes

Invoice processing dropped from roughly a month and a half to three to four minutes per invoice.
Elizabeth Sanchez, Purchasing and Inventory Manager at Monson Fruit Company, described the change directly:
“It used to take me a month and a half just to enter invoices; now I can easily get through each one in about three to four minutes.”

The five-month backlog has been eliminated. Invoices are now matched, approved, and paid on time.

• Mobile purchasing improved accountability. Replacing physical PO books with mobile purchasing gave field teams a more consistent way to submit and manage purchases, while giving management greater visibility into requests and approvals.
• Real-time spend visibility and cost allocation across orchard blocks and departments, rather than visibility only after month-end
• Spend analysis tools give Monson visibility into spending across its 300+ vendors, helping the team identify consolidation opportunities and inform vendor and pricing decisions.

Customer perspective

Elizabeth Sanchez, Purchasing and Inventory Manager at Monson Fruit Company, spoke about the broader change in spend visibility Fraxion brought to the business:

"With Fraxion, we now have far greater visibility into our spending, a level we never had before. Our management team can see exactly who our top spenders are, what they're buying, and how costs are allocated. It's really changed the way we operate."

She also described how Fraxion changed the way the company tracks and allocates purchases:
"We can track where the money's going. If someone buys spray chemicals, we can see exactly which block it was purchased for. This gives us real-time insight into our spending and helps us stay ahead of budget. Before Fraxion, we couldn't track exactly where our purchases were being used. Now, we can allocate costs directly to areas like the packing line, grounds, or orchards, which holds team members accountable."

Both quotes speak to the broader spend-visibility and cost-allocation impact of Fraxion at Monson Fruit, rather than the invoice-processing result specifically.

Why the Monson Fruit example matters

Monson Fruit's experience shows how a paper-driven purchasing and invoicing process can become difficult to manage as a multi-site operation grows. Centralizing digital purchasing records and matching them to invoices helped Monson move from invoice processing that took roughly a month and a half to processing that takes three to four minutes per invoice, and eliminate the five-month backlog that had built up. Alongside that, leadership gained real-time visibility into spending across the business.

How Fraxion supports invoice automation

Fraxion is an all-in-one procure-to-pay solution built for mid-market companies. Monson Fruit's experience demonstrates several of Fraxion's capabilities in practice, including invoice processing, invoice matching, and automated invoice approvals, alongside mobile purchasing and approvals, reporting, and integration with Monson's Compu-Tech ERP.

Not every Fraxion customer will use the platform in exactly the same configuration as Monson Fruit. Finance teams can start with the solution they need most, procurement or AP automation, and expand to full procure-to-pay without reimplementation.

To see how invoice approval fits into the broader picture, compare invoice approval software features, or learn how invoice routing software streamlines AP for the next piece in this series.