Episode 038: Toasting Our Own Champagne: Cheers to OnBase for Accounting!

And it is a tool that ImageSoft does sell so, in the interest of full disclosure, but very oftentimes, the quality or integrity of a company sometimes is viewed by whether or not they use their own products. And, we certainly do. So, Mary Beth, I’ll start with you. How has OnBase helped with the accounts payable process and getting those invoices approved from the various managers, and the different things you have to do, with regard to the accounts payable process?

So, that all changed a few years ago, when ImageSoft decided to invest in a couple of internal IT persons, Nathan and Teresa, to build in house solutions that have spanned every department now, and improved efficiencies everywhere at ImageSoft. Teresa used to be in our Finance department, and switched to IT, so that’s been particularly helpful, as she knows our business needs. And, needless to say, our financial minds were blown.

That all being said, one of them is accounts payable approvals. It’s a rather simple system, really, but it saves us tons of time. Many bills are repetitive and expected, such as utilities, rent. We’re expecting them and approvals really aren’t necessary, so those don’t go through this system. Other bills arrive, which Accounting aren’t familiar with, or expecting. Such as professional fees, legal, accountants, things like that.

So what we used to do was, physically take the invoice to the person that used the service, ask them to approve it and hope they weren’t traveling. And if they were traveling, it would sit on their desk until they returned. Or, we started trading emails, which is not super-efficient and things get lost.

With our new system, the bill is ingested into an OnBase workflow, and routed to the appropriate person for approval. The person can approve, reject, or even approve it and add a note to it, just with one click. When complete, the bill is stored in OnBase, as usual. However, now we have the trail of who approved it, and when. This has saved us a lot of time and has been especially useful during the current COVID pandemic, when we just simply can’t walk to their desk. So, that’s about it, for accounts payable.

For example, I’ll use Amber. Marketing may need to cut a check for an upcoming trade show. The event planner will complete the request, and attach the invoice or quote. This request will go to the marketing manager, Amber’s boss, for approval before Accounting creates the check. Another example may be, laptops and computer equipment, or office supplies. Again, the backup is stored in OnBase, along with the trail of who approved the purchase and when.

So, that’s great. Teresa, you’ve made the move from being in Accounting and Finance, over to the technical side of things. You probably have a unique view, or a unique approach to all these things, which is awesome. And one of the things that I was just thinking of, that we had a prior conversation about is, credit memos. And they’re a necessary part of business, as things change. Orders aren’t complete or things didn’t happen, so credit memos need to be issued. And, can you talk a little bit about what this process was like, and some of the changes that you made to that, using this technology?

So now, what was created in OnBase, we have a credit memo request that uses unity forms and workflow, that requires a review and an approval by a supervisor. And what’s even better than that is, we then created a mechanism that uses SQL to compare the information housed in OnBase to the information housed within our Accounting ERP. Then the Controller, she gets to receive a report that’s going to let her know of any credit memos that were created in the Accounting ERP, without any prior approval. And then, it also alerts her of any approved credit memos that weren’t finished in ERP. So it basically safeguards our ability to prevent fraud and clerical errors, that could otherwise compromise the accuracy of our financial statements, and affect our bottom line.

It’s just an automatic process, that was installed. That’s really cool. That’s awesome.

With this process, the tasks, some could be monthly, some could be quarterly, some are annually. We can customize the task to only happen in February and October, whatever it is that we want. So each month, when we open the month and close, the due dates for the tasks automatically populate a list of task templates that we’ve created. Each task has an owner, and a description of how to perform the task. There’s also a section where we can fill in notes that apply to the current month, as well as the ability to require approval from someone else, if needed, on that task.

Many tasks have sub tasks, which can belong to even different people, than the task owner. So it is nice for the task owner to be able to see how the sub tasks are coming along, so they know when they’re ready to perform their part, and close out that task.

We also attach backup documentation to the task for that month, such as an Excel spreadsheet, because accountants can’t live without Excel. So we back up everything with Excel, and then we can attach it, for that month. And it’s stored with the task in OnBase. So every duty performed has an immediate audit trail. If my task is dependent on a task performed by somebody else, I can actually follow their task

For things such as general ledger account reconciliation, we can enter the GL account balance per our attached spreadsheet. The system then checks the balance we entered to the balance in our ERP system, which is Dynamics SL, and it alerts me if they don’t balance. This check is done again automatically, before the month is actually closed, to be sure nothing snuck into an account accidentally, after the reconciliation was performed.

This process has been especially valuable right now, during the COVID crisis, where we’re not side by side. And we’re not discussing the close. And, as a department manager, I can always look and see how we’re coming. Are we on schedule for the close? Is everybody getting their tasks done? And it really, it’s just valuable for me. I have dashboard views into it. I can look at lists. I can always see where everything is at, to see if we’re on schedule. And I guess, part of the value to us is that, in the event the task owner wins the lottery and never comes back to work, someone else can step right in and perform their month end tasks without missing a beat, because everything is included in that template for the month. So, it’s a fantastic system.

But, somebody could be out sick or something, and you don’t have to be bugging them about how to get that done, so you can do your work. Someone else can just jump in and, theoretically, pick up anybody’s tasks with no issue.

So, what we did is, we decided we didn’t want to keep spending money on stuff we didn’t need to spend money on. So, we put together a very simple solution that lets us keep a record of each individual subscription. So, it’s going to store basic stuff like, who, what’s the company the subscription is through? What’s the product, that we’re buying? Is it annual? Is it monthly? How are we paying for it? How much is it? Who’s the owner? So on and so forth. So, right there, that’s more information than we had previously. It was a lot of email and, “Oh, this looks like it might belong to this department. So I’m going to email the head of that department, and hopefully get information on it.”

So, now that we can store all these records in OnBase, we can do a lot with it. Right now, it’s in its infancy. Frankly, this is a pretty new process, it’s been around for maybe a quarter or so, so not too long. But what we do is, once that record is created, it’s going to go into a holding spot and it’s going to wait until, I believe it’s 45 days before it’s set to expire. And then we’re going to start sending off notifications. We’re going to send it to the department head for whatever department owns that subscription and say, “Hey, something is going to expire. You need to take action on it.”

And then as it gets closer, we’ll send more notifications. And then, it just provides a lot of visibility into something that frankly, had no visibility, previously. So the goal and the hope is that, once it’s put in front of somebody’s face, that something they own is going to expire, hopefully they’ll take action on it. They’ll go to our Accounting Department and say, “You know what? We don’t need this anymore. We’ve moved on to a different product,” which has happened in the past. We’ve had two products we’ve had subscriptions to, and one product hadn’t been used for a couple of years, and we were still paying for it. So this is really just a visibility thing, very simple, but it’s going to help [inaudible 00:19:10] save a lot of money because we’re not going to be paying for stuff we don’t need anymore.

So, along that line of subscription was, subscriptions are fairly periodic, in terms of how often they recur. But the one thing that isn’t periodic, are gift cards. And I know sometimes these gift cards, when they pop up, different people will do it at random different times, and these are sometimes unexpected expenses, as well. So I know in our company, at ImageSoft, managers will sometimes do that for their team. When somebody has a standout performance on something, or does something really well, and you want to reward somebody for extra effort. Which is great, but I know for Accounting those can create, sometimes, a little bit of a headache. So, Mary Beth, can you just talk a little bit about what some of those headaches have been and challenges have been with gift cards, and what have we done for that?

So in our new system, Finance just retains an inventory of gift cards. And, if a manager decides they want a gift card, they’ll request one, using this process. And when it’s approved, an alert is sent to Human Resources, so that they can record it properly. It’s as simple as that. There’s no more, coming through on expense reports. And basically, we told the managers that if they bought one on their own, they better like it, because they own it. They will not get reimbursed for it. So, it’s very easy to do, and it just solves a lot of issues. HR gets an alert that says a gift card was issued, has all the information, and they can include it in their wages on the next payroll run. So, very easy.

My favorite is the financial close, personally. That’s my personal favorite. That’s the one I loved building the most. That’s the one I love using, the most. So, that was my personal favorite. I’m not sure Mary Beth, other than the financial close, which one you might pinpoint. But I think that one is my personal favorite.

And I know even for me, being part of this process too, there’s been times where I’ve had to do things. And I remember getting off of a plane, and needing to approve something for payment right away. And being able to do that, just on my mobile phone. And that connects me to the entire process, without me having to open up a laptop or go back to my desk, or wait to get back to the office to approve anything. Those things have made such a huge difference for me, being a user of the system, as opposed to those in Accounting. So I think it just made the process smoother overall for everybody, in the company.

I know Teresa’s got the comprehensive spreadsheet, probably, in front of her. But I know some of it is, dashboarding of financial information for the owners and appropriate people, to see. There’s a lot to do with our project accounting, that we really haven’t touched on. Our credit card processing. What am I missing, Teresa?

And I think for our listeners, too, I think that this is really helpful information, to let them know that there are solutions that are out there. There are things that can be done, even though you may not be able to buy some of this stuff, off the shelf. It’s kind of hard to, you’re not going to go and buy a whole subscription management system for a small business, but having a tool like OnBase really does give you a lot of flexibility and freedom to do these types of things, and to create those solutions that make a difference. So, I want to thank all three of you, for being on the call today.

For our listeners, if you’re interested in reading and learning a little bit more about how we use this tool, and what this tool can possibly provide for you, you can go to imagesoftinc.com, and click on the Back Office icon. And that will take you to our Back Office page, where you can see some information in terms of accounts payable, contract management, vendor management and some other things that might be of interest to you. So, thank you again for joining us today, hopefully this has been helpful. And, we’ll see you again next time.