In 2026, AMI turns 35.
And while it’s hard to believe that it’s been 35 years, we wanted to share some perspective.
Before the PDF, There Was Paper…
And Lots of It
When AMI started in 1991, invoice management was physical.
Invoices arrived in USPS envelopes. Clients gave them to us in boxes. Sometimes pallets. Sometimes one faxed page at a time, curled and barely legible. A “workflow” meant paper moving from desk to desk. A “system” meant filing cabinets with manila subfolders.
Telecom invoices alone could fill a room. Every line item had to be read, understood, and validated by hand.
Search didn’t exist. Filters didn’t exist.
Highlighters did.
Our First Client Sent a Van
AMI’s first client was Dow Chemical.
They didn’t email invoices. They sent a van full of paper bills.
Boxes stacked to the roof. Thousands of pages. Every invoice had to be opened, reviewed, categorized, and highlighted manually. Literal highlighters. Real people. Real math.
That project didn’t just launch our company. It defined it.
Because the problem wasn’t the paper.
The problem was understanding the spend.
The Fax Machine Was Our API
Before PDFs, the fax machine was how systems talked to each other.
We learned to reconcile missing pages. To spot errors in faint thermal print. To prove discrepancies without screenshots or exports.
If something didn’t add up, you had to explain it with arithmetic. Not dashboards.
And yet, clients didn’t overpay.
The Tools Changed. The Mission Didn’t.
When PDFs finally arrived, we didn’t have to rethink our approach. We already knew what to look for.
We simply applied the same discipline to better tools.
Today, AMI processes millions of invoices digitally with our proprietary PDF Translators across telecom, cloud, SaaS, mobility, and utilities.
No vans. No boxes. No paper cuts.
But the mission is exactly the same as it was in 1991:
Make spend make sense.
And make sure our clients never pay more than they should.
Looking Ahead to 2026
As we close out 2025 and look ahead to our 35th anniversary, we’re proud of where we started.
We’ve seen every version of this problem. Paper. PDFs. Portals. EDI. Flat Files. APIs.
The tools will keep changing.
The need for clean data, clear logic, and accountable spend won’t.
And after 35 years, that’s a future we’re still excited to build.
