Classic Aviation

THE CHALLENGE

Classic Aviation has 200 employees who pilot helicopters, planes or travel for their jobs. Prior to being acquired, Classic had 75 credit cards that the employees used for their expenses.

But they handled their expenses manually - the company had no compliance rules, expense policies, or expense claim process in place. In addition, it had no way of knowing whether the charged expenses were for personal or business reasons. Some employees submitted expenses on a spread sheet with or without receipts; others submitted expenses on a piece of paper; others submitted nothing. Transparency into spending was nonexistent.

The company knew that it needed to gain more control and transparency over its expenses by setting up and requiring compliance to expense policies, requiring submission of receipts for expenses, making sure that submitted expenses were coded to the correct GL account and were setup to go through the proper approval routing. The answer was simple – the workflow process needed to be automated.

Because of the nature of the employee’s jobs, the Director of Finance, Eriko Martian, felt Classic needed an easy to use expense claim system that would take a minimal amount of training to implement companywide. Eriko had previously implemented Concur at another company and knew it was too complicated. After seeing Chrome River EXPENSE and the easier user interface, she decided it was the right system for Classic and that the employees would be able to get up and running quickly with minimal training. Eriko also felt that Chrome River EXPENSE would provide the much needed transparency into employee spending. 

THE IMPLEMENTATION

Prior to training and implementation, Patrick Edinborough, Director of Human Resource, worked with Eriko to create the expense policies and approval routing rules that were built into Chrome River’s Business Rules Engine. Patrick led the training initiative for the employees by department. Despite employees being spread out across the country, Chrome River EXPENSE is so easy to use that all trainings could be conducted online via LogMeIn.com. Both Patrick and Eriko felt the software was very intuitive and didn’t require them to create training materials or cheat sheets for the employees. During the Chrome River implementation, Classic was also implementing ADP Payroll and Quantum Inventory Management, which were both integrated into Chrome River. Chrome River also integrated other surrounding technologies including QuickBooks Premiere and an interface for a US Bank Visa credit card data feed.

THE RESULTS

Classic was very happy with its project manager during implementation. Because Classic was migrating an acquired company and was also implementing ADP Payroll and Quantum Inventory Management at the same time as it was implementing Chrome River, Eriko did not have a lot of time. The Chrome River project manager was very patient with her throughout the process. His thorough understanding of accounting and the software made everything go smoothly. After implementation, Classic was turned over to the Chrome River Help Desk for ongoing day-to-day support. Eriko is pleased with the customer support she is receiving and with the support ticket turnaround time.

Classic met its goal of going from no expense claim process to complete expense workflow automation that requires submission of receipts, compliance to expense policies, approval routing processes and offers more control by providing transparency into spend. Management is now able to have more visibility into employee spend and to make better informed business decisions based on the analytics they have available through Chrome River. Other benefits include saving one fulltime employee and the ability to finish month-end closing by the 10th of the month.

Classic met its goal of going from no expense reporting process to complete expense workflow automation that requires submission of receipts, compliance to expense policies, approval routing processes and offers more control by providing transparency into spend.