FC Cincinnati Scores Big With AP and AR Automation From Centime

A Rising Star in Major League Soccer

Founded in 2015, FC Cincinnati began playing in the United Soccer League (USL) before making the jump to Major League Soccer (MLS) in 2019. Since then, the club has become one of MLS’s fastest-growing organizations.

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“We’ve always been a lean department,” said Becca. “But, with the continued growth of the organization and increased demands on the Finance department, we needed to implement new processes to maintain that growth..”

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And she had seen this play out before. “At my previous company, we had AP automation—and I knew how powerful it could be. When I joined FC Cincinnati in 2022, I immediately started planting the seed: we need this.”

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Choosing Centime: Built for NetSuite, Built to Scale

After over a year of exploring options, Becca ultimately chose Centime for both AP and AR. The deciding factor? While one other solution was also fully integrated with NetSuite, it didn’t offer the same functionality—and it didn’t support AR automation. Centime’s ability to handle both sides of the cash flow made the choice clear.

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“Centime’s native NetSuite integration was a huge differentiator,” said Becca. “It wasn’t another system to manage. It was embedded in our ERP, which meant less disruption and more flexibility.”

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The ability to consolidate multiple entities into one approval console was also a major win. “Our stadium GM approves invoices from the stadium, the training facility, and our front office,” Becca explained. “Centime let us centralize all of that for him—three buildings under one approval console.”

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From start to finish, implementation felt like a true partnership. “We threw all kinds of questions at our Centime contacts, and they always followed through,” Becca added. “They listened and iterated with us.”

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Automating AR First: From Manual Follow-ups to 74% Collection Effectiveness

FC Cincinnati implemented AP and AR automation in parallel, but with a heavier emphasis on AR since many invoices are sent early in the calendar year. At the time, the process was reactive: the team had to manually download invoices, send emails, and respond to constant internal questions about what had been paid.

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“Now invoices get sent automatically,” Becca said. “And internal teams—like Community Relations who manage Gary the Lion, our mascot—can check payment status without asking me.” Gary the Lion regularly does birthday parties and events, and FC Cincinnati invoices customers directly.

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“They used to ping us to ask what’s been paid,” Becca added. “Now they just look it up.” It’s been a major shift in visibility and self-service—even for non-finance users. 

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One of those non-finance users summed it up best. In an internal email, the VP of Community Relations wrote: "Bravo accounting team!! I'm loving Centime!”

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The results speak for themselves:

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• Collections effectiveness jumped by 42%
• Overdue invoices dropped by 46%
• Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) reduced from 106 → 67 days
• Average Days Past Due decreased by 65%: from 46 → 16 days
• Turnover ratio improved  by 45%: from 0.58 → 0.84
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Why This Matters for Sports & Entertainment Finance Teams

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There are specific challenges to the finance side of professional sports organizations – diverse revenue streams (club, stadium, academy, and second team), fluctuating cash flow, and a large number of smaller dollar payments from vendors, ambassadors and event suppliers. Standard accounts payable software for entertainment industry buyers often find that enterprise tools are over-engineered and SMB tools can't handle multi-entity approval routing. Centime hits the mid-market sweet spot and the FC Cincinnati deployment is proof.

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Launching AP: 1,000+ Invoices and Hours Saved Weekly

FC Cincinnati launched AP automation with Centime in March —after already seeing strong results with AR. In just two months, they processed nearly 1,000 invoices through the platform.

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Before Centime, AP was entirely manual. “Every week, the team was uploading invoices, coding them, emailing approvals one-by-one,” Becca recalled. “It took hours every Thursday alone—and that’s not even counting the time spent updating NetSuite or organizing approval backups.”

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Centime streamlined that entire process. The team still reviews invoices early in the week, but now batch-sends approvals with one click. Better yet, Centime automatically enforces threshold-based approvals and retains documentation without extra steps.

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“It saves us at least 2 hours every Thursday,” said Becca. “Probably 8–10 hours a month minimum—and that time goes right back into higher-value work.”

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Accounts Payable KPIs are already improving, just two months after implementing: 

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• DSO dropped from 32 → 24.5 days
  
  
• Turnover ratio improved from 1.91 → 2.28
  
  

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Positioned to Scale

For FC Cincinnati, Centime isn’t just a tactical tool—it’s part of a bigger mission.

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“Our vision is to become a world-class sports and entertainment organization,” Becca said. “With a second team and academy already in place—and other non-MLS revenue opportunities in flight—we need finance systems that help us move fast, but stay controlled. Centime is helping us do that.”

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“It’s not just saving us time,” Becca said. “It’s giving us the controls and visibility we need to grow.” 

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“We want our executive team to see this as a model of how operational efficiency supports strategic growth. And so far, that’s exactly what Centime has delivered.”

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FAQ

1. How does AP automation help sports organizations?

AP automation for sports teams handles high-volume invoice processing across multiple entities (club, stadium, academy), routes approvals by department, and gives non-finance team members self-service payment visibility.

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2. What ERP does FC Cincinnati use with Centime?

FC Cincinnati runs NetSuite. Centime is natively embedded in NetSuite, providing real-time AP and AR automation without additional data syncs or integrations.

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3. What results did FC Cincinnati achieve with Centime?

FC Cincinnati achieved the following results:

• Reduced DSO from 106 days to 67 days
• Decreased overdue invoices by 46%
• Reduced average days past due by 65%
• Saved 8–10 hours per month by reducing manual AP processing work