Wheelabrator

The Challenge

Wheelabrator was in need of an expense management solution to enhance the process of submitting, approving and paying employee expenses. Prior to working with Chrome River, each expense claim had to make its way around the building through three levels of manual approvals before employees could be reimbursed. The employees were responsible for obtaining the first level of approval and the AP department was tasked with obtaining the last two levels of approvals. This process was time-consuming, didn’t encourage compliance to the company’s business rules, required redundant data entry into the finance system, and employees often had to wait to be reimbursed. Wheelabrator ultimately selected Chrome River EXPENSE because it was the superior solution in the marketplace.

We were spending a lot of time manually reviewing and approving paper expense claims. Chrome River was the best fit in the marketplace to address our needs.

Donna Szczechowicz, AP Manager

The Chrome River Solution

Accounting, IT and Shared Services management all took part in the due diligence process as well as the decision making. They wanted an expense management system that provided the following features, and Chrome River was the best fit all around:

1. A paperless option
2. Built-in compliance to business rules and approval routing
3. Reporting, audit and analytics capabilities
4. Auto reminders to employees/managers when expenses are due or need to be approved
5. A reduction in the time spent on submitting, approving and reimbursing expenses
6. Auto import of transactions into the ERP system
7. Simple-to-use software that streamlined the workflow process to make the AP department’s life easier and employees’ lives happier with faster reimbursements

Wheelabrator was also seeking a system that could easily integrate with Ultimate Software (Ultipro Payroll), Great Plains ERP system and Visa corporate cards, since the company’s frequent travelers use corporate cards for travel expenses. Wheelabrator rolled out all new internal systems simultaneously. Chrome River’s project management team presented a methodical approach, which allowed the implementation to go as smoothly as possible. Wheelabrator’s project team had weekly conference calls with Chrome River, external consultants and Wheelabrator personnel to review progress and discuss next steps. After the system was tested, they conducted a pilot program with five of the corporate cardholders. This allowed them to ease into the process and ensure that everything was working the way they wanted before doing a larger roll-out. Frequent travelers also received additional training webinars from Chrome River, which were well received.

Chrome River EXPENSE is straight forward and user friendly. I’m very pleased with the system, and I particularly like that it is highly configurable and flexible to accommodate changes as our business evolves.

Donna Szczechowicz, AP Manager

The Results

The paper is gone, the filing cabinets are empty and there are no more piles of expense claims. The AP department no longer wastes time shuffling and routing paper expense claims for approval. Tracking the status, compliance and progress of an expense claim is no longer done manually by sorting through stacks of Excel spreadsheets. And, there is no duplicate entry of expenses into the ERP system—because it’s all automated. Time is saved, compliance is met, management is informed, AP is happy and employees are reimbursed faster.