Overview
Blott was the pilot customer for Accounting Links and played a foundational role in shaping the product from its earliest iterations. As both a real world user and a product design agency, Blott used Accounting Links in live production while actively influencing its structure, workflows and priorities. The result was a system that materially reduced Accounts Payable processing time while validating the product’s core thesis in a demanding, real operating environment.
This was not a showcase implementation. It was a stress test.
The challenge
Before Accounting Links, Blott’s Accounts Payable operation reflected a common reality for fast growing agencies.
Invoice intake was fragmented across email and shared inboxes.
Approval logic lived in people’s heads rather than systems.
Supplier information was duplicated and inconsistently maintained.
Payment status was opaque to both internal teams and suppliers.
The cost was not just time. It was interruption. Senior staff were repeatedly pulled into operational questions, suppliers chased payments manually, and finance effort skewed toward control rather than analysis.
Blott did not view this as “broken enough” to justify heavy tooling, which made them an ideal pilot. The bar was not novelty. The bar was measurable improvement without operational drag.
Why Accounting Links
Blott adopted Accounting Links early because it aligned with how they already thought about systems.
Single source of truth over layered workarounds.
Network level supplier data rather than tenant level duplication.
Clear, inspectable workflows instead of hidden automation.
Crucially, Accounting Links was positioned not as a replacement finance stack, but as connective tissue across existing tools. This reduced adoption friction and allowed Blott to move quickly without replatforming.
The pilot phase
During the pilot, Blott ran Accounting Links in parallel with live Accounts Payable activity.
Invoices were processed end to end through the platform.
Approval flows were configured to reflect real authority, not idealised charts.
Supplier records were normalised and reused across engagements.
At the same time, Blott fed continuous product feedback into the roadmap. This included challenges to underlying assumptions, edge cases from real invoices, and pressure testing of whether features reduced cognitive load rather than adding to it.
Several core product decisions emerged directly from this phase, including clearer invoice state modelling, tighter approval visibility, and supplier centric data structures.
Outcomes
The impact was immediate and measurable.
Accounts Payable processing time was reduced significantly, primarily through fewer manual handoffs and clearer approval visibility.
Time spent resolving invoice and payment queries dropped as status became explicit and shared.
Supplier communication improved as payment expectations were clearer and more reliable.
Perhaps most importantly, finance effort shifted away from chasing and clarifying toward review and decision making. The system reduced noise rather than creating a new surface area to manage.
Strategic value
Beyond operational gains, Blott validated Accounting Links as a category.
The product proved it could sit comfortably inside an existing finance stack.
It demonstrated that network level supplier data delivers real efficiency, not just theoretical value.
It showed that AP transformation does not require behavioural heroics if the system design is correct.
For Accounting Links, Blott served as both proof and counterweight. Assumptions were challenged early, weak ideas were exposed quickly, and only features that survived real use made it into the core product.
Conclusion
Blott was not just an early customer. They were a co author of the product’s foundations.
By using Accounting Links in production while shaping its evolution, Blott helped turn an abstract platform idea into a system grounded in reality. The result was a faster, clearer, and more resilient Accounts Payable operation for Blott, and a materially stronger product for every customer that followed.
If you want, I can also produce a shortened website version, a metrics first investor version, or a design annotated version showing which product decisions trace back to this case.