Aspen Square Management

Challenge

70% of all invoices were sent to remote locations during the approval process; managers would receive and approve them weekly before sending them back to headquarters for processing. “Our existing process created a time delay and an expense for paper movement,“ said Diane Beauregard, AP Manager. “Invoices also require a second level of approval and frequently would end up lost.” Remote managers often called headquarters with questions, and staff would spend invaluable time conducting paper research to help resolve issues.

Aspen was also acquiring new properties rapidly, and AP transaction volume was increasing. Finance needed a system that would allow them to absorb additional volume without adding staff. They also wanted remote personnel access to information as needed to reduce the number of calls to Finance to do the research for them.

Solution

A critical prerequisite for the solution was a requirement for integration with Aspen’s financial solution, Epicor Enterprise. The company selected DocLink due to its proven integration with Epicor Financials as well as its history with other high volume Epicor users.

DocLink provides Aspen’s remote managers with access to documents. It also enables Finance to track documents in the approval process, resulting in greater accounting control and visibility. “Since implementing DocLink, we’ve seen a dramatic reduction in the amount of questions to headquarters from the field,” said Beauregard.

Benefits

Vendor invoice volume has increased from 14,000 to 20,000 per month. With DocLink, they’ve been able to manage the increase in volume without increasing staff. “Without DocLink, we would have had to hire additional two or three staff members to handle this volume,” says Beauregard. “This would cost the company approximately $100,000 per year. DocLink paid for itself a long time ago!”

Beauregard did an analysis of Aspen’s paper usage and made the following conclusions. In the first year and a half of document imaging, DocLink captured 3.8 million pages of documents which equates to approximately 1,281 feet of stacked paper (a 128-story building) weighing approximately 46,000 lbs (23 tons). This freed up a lot of storage space and file cabinets! In addition, because Aspen manages some HUD-based properties that are regulated, the company is audited internally and externally on a frequent basis.

“We teach the auditors how to use DocLink in a matter of minutes, and then I never hear from them again,” adds Beauregard.