Northeast Treatment Centers

The Challenge

With an outdated, paper-based expense process, Northeast Treatment Centers (NET) struggled to manage its 400 expense reports and 800 invoices each month. With manual, inefficient workflows, there was huge potential for duplicate invoice payments and an overall lack of insight into spend.

To make matters worse, invoices were batch imported, which did not allow for individual approvals and denials within the batch – it was an all or nothing system. According to Robert Ferrandino, Controller at NET, this process ultimately led to an unacceptable level of risk for untimely payments and mis-postings. On the expense side, mileage tracking was overly-cumbersome for both travelers and approvers who had to manually calculate and verify each and every trip.

NET knew there had to be a better way, and started looking for a solution that could drive efficiency, while providing detailed insights into spend.

The Chrome River Solution

As a healthcare non-profit, NET must account for all costs and minimize any spend that isn’t crucial. To help with this, they needed a flexible, easy-to-use system that could provide insights into spend and automatically enforce compliance. 

With insights from Chrome River, NET can now visualize spend and identify areas for efficiency gains. 

We run a lean operation, so any solution that we can use to minimize time and money spent on administrative work—both from our care professionals and our finance team— makes it easier for us to focus on our core mission of supporting some of the most vulnerable members of our community.

Robert Ferrandino, Controller

Results

For the finance team, moving from paper to an online solution has brought tremendous benefits. Invoice data is automatically extracted with OCR Vision and images of the originals attached to each record. This not only cuts the time needed to process invoices, but also the space needed to file them.

NET’s workflow has also drastically improved. Invoices and expenses are automatically routed to the correct individuals for approval utilizing business rules to account for role, dollar limits, and departments. As a result, invoices are paid more quickly and expense reports can be reimbursed in a timelier manner.

With Chrome River, NET’s transactions all live in one centralized location vs. having to log into multiple systems. This allows the accounting team to much more quickly and efficiently report on financials. Likewise, receipt images automatically match users’ transaction data with credit card data in the system, making it quick and easy to view and reconcile each purchase. The end result: NET is now able to finalize billing soon after each month’s end.

NET travelers and approvers have also benefited from Chrome River’s mileage calculator, which automatically calculates the trip and generates a map for each mileage expense submission. “Our employees love the ability to submit mileage simply by entering the start and destination addresses into the expense system,” said Teresamarie Morris, Accounts Payable Specialist. This feature makes it easier for the finance team to verify each trip for reimbursement, which improves internal controls for the auditing process.