PayShepherd, a global provider helping heavy industrial facilities manage contractor billing, today announces it has secured US$3M in seed funding led by Nashville Capital Network, with participation from existing investors Thin Air Labs and the Accelerate Fund, managed by Yaletown Partners with support from the A100.

Since releasing its platform, PayShepherd has helped manufacturing facilities and contractors eliminate overspending, benchmarked in excess of US$1M yearly per major facility, as well as enable better negotiations and improved relationships. Today, manufacturing facilities and the contractors they work with daily, face significant pressure as most input and raw material prices skyrocket with inflation, ongoing supply chain constrictions lead to a squeeze on profit margins and cost-cutting, and the labour market shortage causes issues for contractors as they try to staff facilities from a smaller labour pool. These pressures lead to the current 'do more with less' outlook within the industry.

Enter PayShepherd, a fintech helping manufacturing facilities manage contractor billing and vendor relationships, whose software helps facility executives, back-office operations, and contractor personnel address spend accuracy, secure relationships, reduce inefficiencies, and enable closer alignment to strategic goals by automating the current back-office processes. Modern facilities run on relationships with their contractors, which are mission-critical to protect in challenging times to keep facilities running. A smooth billing process that eliminates costly mistakes is therefore key.

Facilities and contractors currently use slow and complex manual solutions where payments are often delayed or incorrect. PayShepherd's solution sits between facilities and the contracted workforce to identify billing issues, increase visibility and accountability into operations, increase speed and efficacy, and offer real-time data to reduce overall services spend by up to millions of dollars per year.

The three co-founders; Wesley Sessenwein, CEO, Jennifer Hunter, COO, and Johan Lee, CTO, combined over 35 years of experience with the complex legacy systems and relationships in manufacturing facilities to launch PayShepherd in 2018. This new investment will further allow the organization to expand product & engineering capabilities, strengthen operations across Canada and the U.S., open up new verticals, and further develop ecosystem integrations.

"Success in heavy industry comes from nurturing and protecting the relationships between facility and contractor," said Wesley Sessenwein, CEO at PayShepherd. "This investment reaffirms our approach in combining the data our customers already have with a highly-focused product that identifies contract and invoice discrepancies, eliminates errors, and empowers the fair exchange of value between facility and contractor."

PayShepherd works as billing management and contract assurance platform, to eliminate billing discrepancies and improve relationships in the industrial and manufacturing segments. It ensures contractors are billing accurately for labour, equipment, materials and third party expenses, as it automates billing review for discrepancies to eliminate mistakes and overspending and ensures contractors get paid quickly and correctly. The platform works with multiple contractors simultaneously and runs historical audits to help identify savings opportunities. PayShepherd allows teams to focus on what matters most, and avoid billing and payment problems long before they arise. 

"We are excited to partner with PayShepherd as they continue to build innovative technologies that help heavy industry and manufacturing facilities significantly reduce services spend," said Chase Perry, Managing Partner at Nashville Capital. "We are aligned in our vision of using data-driven intelligence to help these companies be more efficient and improve their supplier relationships."

"PayShepherd is focused on solving a very challenging problem for large manufacturers, increasing the accuracy and transparency of financial transactions that occur with their vendors. They are able to drive a great deal of value to their customers and are doing so in a very large and underserved market," said James Lochrie, Managing Partner at Thin Air Labs.