Case Study: Speeding up expense reimbursement for Leysin American School

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Leysin American School is a boarding school located in the Swiss Alps. Since 1961 the school has been dedicated to developing innovative, compassionate and responsible citizens of the world.

Since 1961

The school serves as the centre of learning for young scholars with an interest in academics, sports and the arts. Extracurricular activities for students are always encouraged and the school runs a number of summer programs from June to August.

The Challenge

Staff at Leysin American School historically used manual processes such as spreadsheets and paper to track and approve annual budgets and expenditure.

General feedback from the finance staff was that budgeting and expenditure was something in the school that lacked tight controls – despite there being an existing system in place.

Members of the finance department were growing increasingly aware of how difficult it was to approve and pay for invoices with complete confidence. The school’s Director of Information Technology, Michelle Laudermilk, and Stacey Pilkington of the Accounting Team, identified the need for a user-friendly, process driven and robust mobile system and approached ProcurementExpress.com for advice.

The Solution

In the winter of 2016, ProcurementExpress.com presented their purchase order solution to Leysin American School. With overwhelmingly positive feedback, the school’s finance team realised that ProcurementExpress.com would not only offer a spending compliance solution for the school, but also improve efficiency for all staff thanks to the automation features at its core.

“The flexible nature of the platform and automation driven features in ProcurementExpress.com allows us to hold individual school departments and faculties accountable for the purchasing decisions that they make.” said Laudermilk.

“We no longer have a situation where teachers and staff are queuing up outside the finance department to get their out-of-pocket expenses from a school tour or field trip approved. This means that my team and teachers alike can focus their attention on other areas of their job.” said Pilkington.

The accounting department in Leysin American School has grown especially fond of ProcurementExpress.com as it can be used remotely in an offline environment and also can be fully integrated with an enterprise accountancy system of their choice.

The Results

The Accounting Team at Leysin American School now use ProcurementExpress.com to encourage safe spending in their school. Their solution is fully automated and admin tasks that used to take hours can now be completed in a number of minutes.

The school approached this project with the intention to introduce money saving controls in their organisation and they can now be 100% confident that there is an audit trail that backs up every single purchase, big or small! This is a crucial consideration for any organisation that relies on public funds and grants.

Pilkington said, It should have been more obvious at the time, but we just didn’t truly realise the power of automation. We’ve had remarkable results by embracing a simple system that gives us true insight into our spending.

All of our staff now have a better idea of their departmental budgets and whether you’re in the teaching, facilities or the catering department there’s never an excuse to overspend or delay payment to suppliers.”

Now, teachers and staff at Leysin American School are using ProcurementExpress.com to set budgets, seek approval for purchases and maintain an audit log that protects all parties in the event of there being a financial discrepancy or audit.

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